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HARRIET MARTINEAU. 



The next volume in the Famous Women Series 
will be: 

Madam Roland. By Mathilde Blind. 

Already published: 

George Eliot. By Miss Blind. 
Emily Bronte. By Miss Robinson. 
George Sand. By Miss Thomas. 
Mary Lamb. By Mrs. Gilchrist. 
Margaret Fuller. By Julia Ward Howe. 
Maria Edgeworth. By Miss Zimmern. 
Elizabeth Fry. By Mrs. E. R. Pitman. 
The Countess of Albany. By Vernon Lee. 
Mary Wollstonecraft. By Elizabeth Robins 

Pennell. 
Harriet Martineau. By Mrs. F. Fenwick Miller. 




\^ 



HARRIET MARTINEAU, 



BY 



MRS. F. FENWICK MILLER. 







[ JAN Y Iu^Ih/' 



BOSTON: ' 
ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
1885. 



\ 






Copyright, 1884, 
By Roberts Brothers. 



University Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



PREFACE 



The material for this biographical and critical 
sketch of Harriet Martineau and her works 
has been drawn from a variety of sources. 
Some of it is quite new. Her own Autobiog- 
raphy was completed in 1855 ; and there has 
not hitherto been anything at all worth calling 
a record of the twenty-one years during which 
she lived and worked after that date. Even as 
regards the earlier period, although, of course 
I have drawn largely for facts upon the Auto- 
biography, yet I have found much that is new 
to relate. For some information and hints 
about this period I am indebted to her relatives 
of her own generation. Dr. James Martineau, 
and Mrs. Henry Turner, of Nottingham, as 
well as to one or two others. With reference 
to the latest twenty-one years of her life, my 
record is entirely fresh, though necessarily 



VI PREFACE. 

brief. Mrs. Chapman, of Boston, U. S. A., 
has written a volume in completion of the 
Autobiography, which should have covered this 
later period ; but her account is little more 
than a repetition, in a peculiar style, of the 
story that Miss Martineau herself had told, and 
leaves the later work of the life without syste- 
matic record. As a well-known critic remarked 
in Macmillaii — "This volume is one more illus- 
tration of the folly of intrusting the composi- 
tion of biography to persons who have only 
the wholly irrelevant claim of intimate friend- 
ship." But it should be remembered that 
when Miss Martineau committed to Mrs. Chap- 
man the task of writing a memorial sketch, 
and when the latter accepted the undertaking, 
both of them believed that the life and work 
of the subject of it were practically over. I 
have reason to know that if Harriet Martineau 
had supposed it to be even remotely possible 
that so much of her life remained to be spent 
and recorded, she would have chosen some one 
more skilled in literature, and more closely 
acquainted with English literary and political 
affairs, to complete her "Life." Having once 



PREFACE. vil 

asked Mrs. Chapman to fulfill the task, how- 
ever, Harriet Martineau was too loyal and gen- 
erous a friend to remove it from her charge ; 
and Mrs. Chapman, on her side, while contin- 
ually begging instructions from her subject as 
to what she was to say, and while doubtless 
aware that she would not be adequate to the 
undertaking which had grown so since she 
accepted it, yet would not throw it off her 
hands. But her volume is in no degree a rec- 
ord of those last years, which constitute nearly 
a third of Harriet Martineau's whole life. I 
have had to seek facts and impressions about 
that period almost entirely from other sources. 
My deepest obligations are due, and must be 
first expressed, to Mr. Henry G. Atkinson, the 
dearest friend of Harriet Martineau's maturity. 
It is commonly known that she forbade, by her 
will, the publication of her private letters ; but 
she showed her supreme faith in and value for 
her friend, Mr. Atkinson, by specially exempt- 
ing him from such prohibition. Her objection 
to the publication of letters was made on gen- 
eral grounds. Her own letters are singularly 
beautiful specimens of their class ; and she 



viii PREFACE. 

declared that she would not mind if every word 
that ever she wrote were published ; but she 
looked upon it as a duty to uphold the principle 
that letters should be held sacred confidences, 
just as all honorable people hold private con- 
versations, not to be published without leave. 
But in authorizing Mr. Atkinson to print her 
letters, if he pleased, she maintained that she 
was not departing from this principle ; for it 
was only the same as it would be if two friends 
agreed to make their conversation known. I 
feel deeply grateful to Mr. Atkinson for allow- 
ing me the privilege of presenting some of her 
letters to the public in this volume, and of 
perusing very many more. 

I have been permitted, also, to read a vast 
number of Harriet Martineau's letters addressed 
to other friends besides Mr. Atkinson, and how 
much they have aided me in the following work 
and in appreciating her personality, may easily 
be guessed ; but, of course, I may not publish 
these letters. Amongst many persons to whom 
I am indebted for helping me to "get touch" 
with my subject in this way, I must specially 
thank two. Mr. Henry Reeve, the editor of 



PREFACE. IX 

the Edinburgh Review, was a relative and inti- 
mate friend of Harriet Martineau; and her 
correspondence with so distinguished a man of 
letters was, naturally, peculiarly interesting — 
not the less so because they differed altogether 
on many matters of opinion. Her letters, which 
Mr. Reeve has kindly allowed me to see, have 
been of very great service to me. Miss F, 
Arnold, of Fox How, (the youngest daughter 
of Dr. Arnold, of Rugby,) is the second to 
whom like particular acknowledgments is due. 
She was young enough to have been Harriet 
Martineau's daughter; but she was also a 
beloved friend, and was almost a daily visitor at 
"The Knoll" during the later years of Miss 
Martineau's life. The letters which Miss 
Arnold, during occasional absences from home, 
received from her old friend, are very domestic, 
lively, and characteristic of the writer. It has 
been of great value to me to have seen all the 
letters that have been lent me, but especially 
these two sets, so different and yet so similiar 
as I have found them to be. 

I have visited Norwich, and seen the house 
where Harriet Martineau was born ; Tyne- 



X PREFACE. 

mouth, where she lay ill ; Ambleside, where 
she lived so long and died at last ; and Birming- 
ham, to see my valued friends, her nieces and 
nephew. If I should thank by name all with 
whom I have talked of her, and from whom I 
have learned something about her, the list would 
grow over-long ; and so I must content myself 
with thus comprehensively expressing my sense 
of individual obligations to all who have laid 
even a small stone to this little memorial cairn. 

F. F. M. 



^ 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGB. 

The Child at Home and at School . . i 



CHAPTER 11. 
Early Womanhood ; Developing Influences 29 

CHAPTER III. 
Earliest Writings 49 

CHAPTER IV. 
Grief Struggle, and Progress ... 67 

CHAPTER V. 
The Great Success 100 

CHAPTER VI. 
Five Active Years 130 

CHAPTER VII. 

Five Years of Illness, and the Mesmeric 

Recovery 155 



xii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

PAGE. 

The Home Life 178 

CHAPTER IX. 
In the Maturity of her Powers . . . 200 

CHAPTER X. ^ 
In Retreat; Journalism 231 

CHAPTER XL 
The Last Years 264 



HARRIET MARTINEAU, 



CHAPTER I. 

THE CHILD AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL. 

When Louis XIV. of France revoked the 
Edict of Nantes, in 1688, a large number of 
the Protestants who were driven out of France 
by the impending persecutions came to seek 
refuge in this favored land of liberty of ours. 
Many who thus settled in our midst were 
amongst the most skillful and industrious work- 
ers, of various grades, that could have been 
found in the dominions of the persecuting king 
who drove them forth. They must have been, 
too, in the nature of the case, strong-hearted, 
clear in the comprehension of their principles, 
and truthful and conscientious about matters of 
opinion ; for the cowardly, the weak, and the 
false could stay in their own land. From the 
good stock of these exiles for conscience-sake 
sprang Harriet Martineau. 

Her paternal Huguenot ancestor was a sur- 



2 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

geon, who was married to a fellow-country- 
woman and co-religionist of the name of Pierre. 
This couple of exiles for freedom of opinion 
settled in Norwich, where the husband pursued 
his profession. Their descendants supplied a 
constant succession of highly-respected sur- 
geons to the same town, without intermission, 
until the early part of this century, when the 
line of medical practitioners was closed by the 
death of Harriet Martineau's elder brother at 
less than thirty years old. The Martineau 
family thus long occupied a good professional 
position in the town of Norwich. 

Harriet's father, however, was not a surgeon, 
but a manufacturer of stuffs, the very names of 
which are now strange in our ears — bomba- 
zines and camlets. His wife was Elizabeth 
Rankin, the daughter of a sugar-refiner of New- 
castle-on-Tyne. A true Northumbrian woman 
was Mrs. Martineau ; with a strong sense of 
duty, but little warmth of temperament ; with 
the faults of an imperious disposition, and its 
correlative virtues of self-reliance and strength 
of will. These qualities become abundantly 
apparent in her in the story of her relationship 
with her famous daughter. On both sides, 
therefore, Harriet Martineau was endowed by 
hereditary descent with the strong qualities — 
the power, the clear-headedness, and the keen 



AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL. 3 

conscience — which she interfused into all the 
work of her life. 

Thomas and Elizabeth Martineau, her father 
and mother, were the parents of eight children, 
two of whom became widely known and influ- 
ential as thinkers and writers. Harriet was 
the sixth of the family, and was born a.t Nor- 
wich, in Magdalen street, on the I2th of June, 
1802, the mother being at that time thirty 
years old. The next child, born in 1805, was 
the boy who grew up to become known as Dr. 
James Martineau; so that the two who were to 
make the family name famous were next to 
each other in age. Another child followed in 
this family group, but not until 181 1, when 
Harriet was nine years old, so that she could 
experience with reference to this baby some of 
that tender, protective affection which is such 
an education for elder children, and so delight- 
ful to girls with strong maternal instincts such 
as she possessed. 

The sixth child in a family of eight is likely 
to be a personage of but small consequence. 
The parents' pride has been somewhat satiated 
by previous experiences of the wonders of the 
dawning faculties of their children ; and the 
indulgence which seems naturally given to " the 
baby " gets comparatively soon transferred 
from poor number six to that interloper number 



4 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

seven. Mrs. Martineau, too, was one of that 
sort of women who, as they would say, do not 
*' spoil " their children. Ready to work foj 
them, to endure for them, to struggle to pro- 
vide them with all necessary comforts, and even 
with pleasures, at the cost, if need be, of per- 
sonal sacrifice of comfort and pleasure, such 
mothers yet do not give to their children that 
bountiful outpouring of tender, caressing, ma- 
ternal love, which the young as much require 
for their due and free growth as plants do the 
floods of the summer sunshine. To starve the 
emotions in a child is not less cruel than to 
stint its body of food. To repress and chain 
up the feelings is to impose as great a hardship 
as it would be to fetter the freedom of the 
limbs. Mothers who have labored and suf- 
fered through long years for the welfare of their 
children, are often grieved and pained in after 
days to find themselves regarded with respect 
rather than with fondness ; but it was they 
themselves who put the seal upon the fountains 
of affection at the time when they might have 
been opened freely — and whose fault is it if, 
later, the outflow is found to be checked for 
evermore } 

The pity of it is that such mischief is often 
wrought by parents who love their children 
intensely, but who err in the management of 



AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL. 5 

them for want of the wisdom of the heart, the 
power of sympathetic feeling, which is seen so 
liiuch stronger sometimes in comparatively shal- 
low natures than in the deeper ones that have 
really more of love and of self-sacrifice in their 
souls. Those who lack tenderness either of 
manner or feeling, those to whom the full and 
free expression of affection is difificult or seems 
a folly, may perhaps be led to reflect, by the 
story of Harriet Martineau's childhood, on the 
suffering and error that may result from a 
neglect of the moral command : *' Parents, pro- 
voke not your children to wrath." 

" My life has had no spring," wrote Harriet 
Martineau, sadly ; yet there was nothing in the 
outer circumstances of her childhood and youth 
to justify this feeling. Her mother's temper 
and character were largely responsible for what 
Harriet calls her "habit of misery" during 
childhood. It is right to explain, however, that 
this unhappiness was doubtless partly due to 
physical causes. She was a weakly child, her 
health having been undermined by the dis- 
honesty of the wet nurse employed for her 
during the first three months of her life. The 
woman lost her milk, and managed to conceal 
the fact until the baby was found to be in 
an almost dying condition from the conse- 
quences of want of nourishment. How far her 



6 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

frequent ill-health, during many succeeding 
years, was to be ascribed to this cannot be 
known ; but her mother naturally attributed all 
Harriet's delicacy of health to this cause, even 
the deafness from which she suffered, although 
this did not become pronounced till she was 
over twelve years of age. 

Her deafness, which was the most commonly 
known of her deficiencies of sensation, was not 
her earliest deprivation of a sense. She was 
never able to smell, that she could remember; 
and as smell and taste are intimately joined 
together, and a large part of what we believe 
to be flavor is really odor, it naturally followed 
that she was also nearly destitute of the sense 
of taste. Thus two of the avenues by which 
the mind receives impressions from the outer 
world were closed to her all her life, and a 
third was also stopped before she reached wo- 
manhood. The senses are the gates by which 
pleasure as well as pain enter into the citadel 
where consciousness resides. Of all the senses, 
those which most frequently give entrance to 
pleasure and seldomest to pain, were those which 
she had lost. ''When three senses out of five 
are deficient," as she said, "the difficulty of 
cheerful living is great, and the terms of life 
are truly hard." 

She suffered greatly, even as a little child, 



AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL. / 

from indigestion. Milk in particular disagreed 
with her; but it was held essential by Mrs. 
Martineau that children should eat bread and 
milk, and for years poor Harriet endured daily 
a lump at her chest and an oppression of the 
spirits, induced by her inability to digest her 
breakfast and supper. Nightmares and cause- 
less apprehensions in the day also afflicted the 
nervous and sensitive girl, and she had "hardly 
any respite from terror." 

A child so delicate in health could not have 
been very happy tinder any home conditions. 
Only a truly wise and tender maternal guardian- 
ship could have made the life of such an one at 
all tolerable; but Harriet Martineau was one 
of the large family of a sharp-tempered, mas- 
terful, stern, though devoted mother, whose 
cleverness found vent in incessant sarcasm, and 
in whom the love of power natural to a capable, 
determined person degenerated, as it so often 
does in domestic life, into a severe despotism. 

Mrs. Martineau's circumstances were such as 
to increase her natural tendency to stern and 
decided rule. Dr. Martineau tells me that all 
who knew his mother feel that Harriet does 
not do justice in her "Autobiography" to that 
mother's nobler qualities, both moral and intel- 
lectual, and especially the latter. Harriet and 
James Martineau, like so many other men and 



8 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

women of mark, were the children of a mother 
of uncommon mental capacity. Her business 
faculties were so good, and her judgment so 
clear, that her husband (a man of a sweet and 
gentle disposition) invariably took counsel with 
her about all his affairs, and acted by her advice. 
There are still inhabitants of Norwich who 
remember Mrs. Martineau, and their testimony 
of her is identical with her son's. ''She was 
the ruling spirit in that house," says one of 
them. "Whatever was done there, you under- 
stood that it was she who did it." The way in 
which this gentleman came to know so much 
of her corroborates Dr. Martineau's declaration 
that "she was really devoted to her children, 
and would do anything for them; if we were 
miserable in our childhood (a fact which he 
does not dispute) it could not be said to be con- 
sciously her fault." Mr. was the husband 

of a lady who had been reared from early child- 
hood by Mrs. Martineau, having been adopted 
by her simply in order to provide her little 
daughter, Ellen, who was nine years younger 
than Harriet, with a child companion somewhat 
about her own age. This lady, her widowed 
husband tells me, retained a most warm 
admiration and affection for Mrs. Martineau. 
Mothers who have brought up eight children 
of their own can appreciate the self-devotedness 



AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL. g 

of this mother in receiving a ninth child by 
adoption in order to increase the well-being of 
her own little daughter. 

Several other instances were told to me of 
Mrs. Martineau's benevolence and kindness of 
disposition. Young men belonging to her 
religious body, and living in lodgings in Nor- 
wich, were uniformly made welcome to her 
house, as a home, every Sunday evening. One 
of the Norwich residents, with whom I have 
talked about her, received a presentation from 
her to the Unitarian Free School, and after- 
wards, in his school life, met with constant 
encouragement and patronage at her hands. 
He tells me that he has never forgotten the 
stately and impressive address with which she 
gave him the presentation ticket, concluding 
with a reminder that if he made good use of 
this opportunity he might even hope one day 
to become a member of the Town Council of 
that city, — and at that giddy eminence her 
protege Yioy^ stands. 

For the sake of the lesson, it should be 
understood that she was thus truly benevolent 
and kindly, and no vulgar termagant or scold. 
It is for us to see how such a nature can be 
spoiled for daily life by too unchecked a course 
of arbitrary rule, and by repression of outward 
signs of tenderness. 



lO HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

Not the least evil which a stern parent, who 
maintains a reserve of demeanor, and who 
requires strictness of discipline within the 
home, may do to himself and his children, is 
that by denying expression to the children's 
feelings he closes to himself the possibility of 
knowing what goes on in their young minds. 
Thus, a child so restrained may for years suffer 
under a sense of injustice, and of undue 
favoritism shown to another, or under a belief 
that the parent's love is lacking, when a few 
words might have cleared away the misappre- 
hension, and given the child the natural happi- 
ness of its age. 

Speaking of her childhood, Harriet says : "I 
had a devouring passion for justice; justice, 
first, to my own precious self, and then to other 
oppressed people. Justice was precisely what 
was least understood in our house, in regard to 
servants and children. Now and then I des- 
perately poured out my complaints ; but in 
general I brooded over my injuries and those 
of others who dared not speak, and then the 
temptation to suicide was very strong." 

The most vivid picture that she has drawn of 
the discipline under which such emotions were 
induced in her is found in a story, TJie Crofton 
Boys, which she wrote during a severe illness, 
and under the impression that it would contain 



AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL. II 

her last words uttered through the press. Mrs. 
Proctor, in The Ci'ofton Boys, is depicted with 
remarkable vividness by a series of little 
touches, and in a succession of trivial details, 
with an avoidance of direct description, that 
reminds us of the method of Jane Austen. 
Harriet never achieved any other portrait of a 
character such as this one; for this is treated 
with such minute fidelity, and such evident 
unconsciousness, that we feel sure, as we some- 
times do with a picture, that the likeness must 
be an exact one. So distinct an individuality 
is shown to us, and at the same time, the evi- 
dences of the artist's close and careful observa- 
tion of his model are so obvious, that, without 
having seen the subject, w^fcel the accuracy of 
the likeness. So does the ''portrait of a 
mother " in that tale which Harriet wrote for 
her last words through the press, show us the 
nature of Mrs. Martineau in her maternal 
relation. 

''Mrs. Proctor so seldom praised anybody 
that her words of esteem went a great way . . . 
Everyone in the house was in the habit of hid- 
ing tears from Mrs. Proctor, who rarely shed 
them herself, and was known to think that 
they might generally be suppressed, and should 
be so." 

If any person were weak enough to express 



12 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

emotion in this way in her presence, Mrs. Proc- 
tor would promptly and sternly intimate her 
disapproval of such indulgence of the feelings. 
When the little lad was leaving home for the 
first time, all the rest of the household became 
a little unhappy over the parting. 

" Susan came in about the cord for his box, 
and her eyes were red, — and at the sight of 
her Agnes began to cry again ; and Jane bent 
down over the glove she was mending for him, 
and her needle stopped. 

*' 'Jane,* said her mother, gravely, 'if you are 
not mending that glove, give it to me. It is 
getting late.' 

"Jane brushed her hand across her eyes, and 
stitched away again. Then she threw the 
gloves to Hugh without looking at him, and ran 
to get ready to go to the coach." 

So little allowance was ordinarily made in 
that house for signs of affection, or manifesta- 
tions of personal attachment, that the child 
who was going away for six months was 
''amazed to find that his sisters were giving up 
an hour of their lessons that they might go 
with him to the coach." Even when Hugh got 
his foot so crushed it had to be amputated, 
though his mother came to him and gave him 
every proper attention, yet " Hugh saw y\q tears 
from her"; nothing more than that "her face 



AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL. 1 3 

was very pale and grave." His anticipations of 
her coming had not been warm ; his one anxiety 
had been that he might bear his pain resolutely 
before her. '' As Hugh cried, he said he bore 
it so very badly he did not know what his 
mother would say if she saw him." And it 
was well that he had not anticipated any out- 
burst of pity or expression of sympathy from 
her, for, when she did come, *' she kissed him 
with a long, long kiss ; but she did not speak." 
Her first words in the hearing of her agonized 
child were spoken to give him an intimation 
that the surgeons were waiting to take off his 
foot. The boy's reply was — not to cling to her 
for support, and to nestle in her bosom for com- 
fort in the most terrible moment of his young 
life, but — "Do not stay now; this pain \'$> so 
bad ! I can't bear it well at all. Do go, now, 
and bid them make haste, will you } " 

Later, when the leg was better, the poor 
boy's mental misery once overpowered him, 
even in his mother's presence. Sitting with 
her and his sister — "... He said, ' He did 
not know how he should bear his misfortune. 
When he thought of the long, long days, and 
months, and years, to the end of his life, and 
that he should never run and play, and never 
be like other people, and never able to do the 
commonest things without labor and trouble, 



14 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

he wished he was dead. He would rather have 
died ! ' Agnes thought he must be miserable 
indeed if he would venture to say this to his 
mother." Such was the idea that these chil- 
dren had of maternal sympathy and love ! So 
little did they look upon their mother as the 
one person above all others to whom their 
secret troubles should be opened ! 

It is proper to observe that the mother came 
out of this test well. There is no record that 
Mrs. Martineau was ever found wanting in due 
care for her children when the pent-up agony 
of their bodies or spirits became so violent as 
to burst the bonds of reserve that her general 
demeanor and method of management imposed 
upon them. Her children's misery (for Harriet 
was not the only one of the family whose child- 
hood was wretched) came not from any inten- 
tional neglect, or even from any indifference on 
her part to their comfort • and happiness, but 
solel}^, let it be repeated, from her arbitrary 
manner and her quickness of temper. It is 
worth repeating (if biography be of value for 
the lessons which may be drawn from it for the 
conduct of other lives) that the mother whose 
children were so spirit-tossed and desolate was, 
nevertheless, one who gave herself up to their 
interests, and labored incessantly and unself- 
ishly for their welfare. It was not love that 



AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL. 1 5 

really was wanting; far less was it faithfulness 
in the performance of a mother's material duties 
to her children; all that was lacking was the 
free play of the emotions on the surface, the 
kisses, the loving phrases, the fond tones, 
which are assuredly neither weaknesses nor 
works of supererogation in family life. By 
means of candid expression alone can the emo- 
tions of one mind touch those of another; and 
from the lack of such contact between a child 
and its mother there must come, in so close a 
life relationship, misery to the younger and dis- 
appointment to the elder of the two. 

''I really think," says Harriet, "if I had once 
conceived that anybody cared for me, nearly all 
the sins and sorrows of my anxious childhood 
would have been spared me." Yet, not only 
was she well fed, well clothed, well educated, 
and sent to amusements to give her pleasure 
(magic lanterns, parties and seaside trips are all 
mentioned) ; but besides all this, when she did 
burst forth, like Hugh Proctor in the book, 
with the expression of her suffering, she was 
soothed and cared for. But this last happened 
so rarely — of course entirely because it was 
made so difficult for her to express herself — 
that the occasions lived in her memory all her 
life. 

The moral consequences of all this were 



l6 HARRIET MARTINEAU, 

naturally bad. Even with all motherly sympa- 
thy and encouragement, so sickly a child would 
have been likely to suffer from timidity, and to 
fall into occasional fits of despondency and 
irritability; but, with fear continually excited 
in her mind, and with an eternal storm of 
passionate opposition to arbitrary authority 
raging in her soul, it is no wonder that the 
poor child made for herself a character for will- 
fulness and obstinacy, while internally she suf- 
fered dreadfully from her conscience. "In my 
childhood," she says, *'I would assert or deny 
anything to my mother that would bring me 
through most easily. . . . This was so ex- 
clusively to one person that, though there was 
remonstrance and punishment, I was never 
regarded as a liar in the family." Her strength 
of will was very great ; and when she had been 
placed in a false position by her dread of re- 
buke, the powerful will came into play to main- 
tain a dogged, stubborn, indifferent appearance. 
Yet all the while her conscientiousness — the 
strong convictions as to what was right, and the 
ardent desire to do it, which marked her whole 
career — was at work within her, causing a 
mental shame and distress which might have 
been easily aided by gentle treatment to over- 
come the fear and the firmness which were 
acting together to make her miserable and a 
sinner. 



AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL. 17 

It is altogether a sad story, but I have not 
told it at length without reason. The fact that 
other children are suffering similarly every 
day makes the record worth repeating. But, 
besides this, her vivid remembrance of her 
childish pangs tends to show how warm and 
strong were her natural affections. If Harriet 
Martineau's mind had not been sensitive and 
emotional, and if her love for those united to 
her by family ties had not been ardent, she 
would not have felt as she did in her childhood, 
and she would not have remembered, all through 
her life, how she had suffered in her early years 
from unsatisfied affection. Now, this soft, 
loving, emotional side of her character must be 
recognized before her life and her work can be 
properly appreciated. 

The intellectual influences of her home life 
were not more happy than the moral ones. 
She was thought by her family anything but a 
clever child. Indeed, Dr. James Martineau 
(whose recollections are peculiarly valuable, 
both from his nearness to Harriet in age and 
from their great attachment in early life) still 
thinks that she really was a dull child. Her 
intelligence, he believes, awoke only in her 
later youth, coincidentally with some improve- 
ment in health. It is hard to guess what the 
impression of her childish intellectual powers 



1 8 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

might have been under different conditions. 
She suggestively remarks*: " It should never 
be forgotten that the happier a child is the 
cleverer he will be. This is not only because 
in a state of happiness the mind is free, and at 
liberty for the exercise of its faculties instead 
of spending its thoughts and energy in brood- 
ing over troubles, but also because the action 
of the brain is stronger when the frame is in a 
state of hilarity ; the ideas are more clear, 
impressions of outward objects are more vivid, 
and the memory will not let them slip." More- 
over, it is a fact worthy of note that the recog- 
nition by her family of her mental development 
followed upon her return home after she had 
been away for a time, and had been learning at 
a boarding-school under ''the first person of 
whom she never felt afraid." Still, the fact 
remains that Harriet was the ugly duckling of 
her family, and supposed to be the most stupid 
of the group of Martineau children. 

She was active-minded enough, however, to 
begin early that spontaneous self-education 
which only intellects of real power undertake, 
either in childhood or in later years. 

Milton was her master. When she was 
seven years old she came by accident upon a 
copy of Paj-adisc Lost lying open upon a table. 

* Household Education, p. 202. 



AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL. 1 9 

Taking it up, she saw the heading "Argument," 
and in the text her eye caught the word 
*' Satan." Instantly the mind which her rela- 
tions thought so sluggish was fired by the 
desire to know how Satan could be argued 
about. She sought the passage which tells 
how the arch-fiend was — 

Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, 
With hideous ruin and combustion, down 
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell 
In adamantine chains and penal fire. 

For the ensuing seven years her thoughts 
dwelt daily in the midst of the solemn scenes, 
and moved to the sound of the sonorous music 
of Milton's poetry. " I wonder how much of it 
I knew by heart — enough to be always repeat- 
ing it to myself with every change of light and 
darkness, and sound, and silence, the moods of 
the day and the seasons of the year." The 
dull child, who neglected her multiplication 
table, did so because her mind was pre-occupied 
with thoughts of this grander order. 

Her love of books increased, and her range 
of reading became wide. Milton, although the 
favorite, was by no means her only beloved 
author. She read rapidly, and, as clever chil- 
dren often do, voraciously. Whole pages or 
scenes from Shakespeare, Goldsmith, Thomp- 



20 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

son, and Milton she learned by heart, until she 
knew enough poetry to have fitted her for the 
occupation of a wandering reciter. In this way 
her self-education in the English classics, and 
in literary style, went on at the same time with 
her daily education by living teachers. 

Harriet's formal education was somewhat 
desultory ; but it is a noteworthy fact that it 
was, so far as it went, what would have been 
called a "boy's education." In this respect 
the history of her mental development is the 
same as that of many other illustrious women 
of the past. Girls' High Schools, and Univer- 
sity examinations for young women, are prod- 
ucts of the present day, and are rapidly ren- 
dering obsolete the old ideas about the neces- 
sary differences and distinctions between the 
education of boys and girls. But up to the 
first quarter of this century, the minds of boys 
and of girls were commonly submitted.to entirely 
different courses of training. While the boys 
learned precision in reasoning from mathematics, 
the girls were considered sufficiently equipped 
for their lot in life by a knowledge of the 
first three rules of arithmetic. While any fac- 
ulty of language that a lad possessed was trained 
and exercised by the study of the classics, his 
sister was thought to require no more teaching 
in composition and grammar than would enable 



AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL. 21 

her to write a letter. Elaborate samplers, spec- 
imens of fine stitching, of hemming done by a 
thread on the most delicate cambric, of marking 
in tiny stitches and wonderful designs, and of 
lace more noticeable for difficulty in the doing 
than for beauty, have come down to us from 
our grandmothers' days, to show us how the 
school-time of the girls was being disposed of, 
while the boys were studying Euclid, Virgil, 
and Homer. If we have changed all that, and 
are now beginning to give a considerable pro- 
portion of our girls the same mental diet for 
the growth and sustenance of their minds with 
that which is supplied to boys, it is largely 
owing to the direct efforts in favor of such a 
course put forth by women such as Harriet 
Martin eau, who had themselves been, at least 
partially, educated ''like boys," and were con- 
scious that to such education they owed much 
of their mental superiority over average women. 
In her earlier years Harriet was taught at 
home by her elder brothers and sisters, with 
the addition of lessons in some subjects from 
masters. She was well grounded in this man- 
ner in Latin, French and the ordinary element- 
ary subjects. But her systematic education did 
not begin until she was eleven, when she and 
her sister Rachel were sent to a school kept by 
a good master, at which boys also were receiv- 
ing their education. 



22 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

The school-life was delectable to Harriet. 
Mr. Perry, the master, was gentle in his man- 
ner, and methodical in his style of teaching ; 
and under his tuition the shy, nervous child felt 
for the first time encouraged to do her best, and 
aided not merely to learn her lessons, but also 
to expand her mental faculties. The two years 
that she remained at Mr. Perry's school gave 
her a fair insight into Latin and French, and 
enabled her to discover that arithmetic was to 
her mind a delightful pastime rather than a 
difficult study. English composition was for- 
mally and carefully taught. This was Harriet's 
favorite lesson ; but she would spend her play- 
time in covering a slate with sums for the mere 
pleasure of the exercise 

When Harriet had been at this school for 
about two years, Mr. Perry left Norwich. The 
home system of education was then resumed. 
She had visiting masters in Latin, French, and 
music. For the rest, Mrs. Martineau selected 
a course of reading on history, biography, and 
literature. One of the girls read aloud daily 
while the others did needle-work. 

*' The amount of time we spent in sewing now 
appears frightful ; but it was the way in those 
days among people like ourselves." Harriet be- 
came a thoroughly accomplished needle-woman. 
She had, indeed, a liking for the occupation, 



AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL. 23 

and continued to do much of it all through 
her life. Many of her friends can show hand- 
some pieces of fancy-work done by her hands. 
Again and again she contributed to public 
objects by sending a piece of her own beautiful 
needle-work to be sold for the benefit of a 
society's funds. Not even in the busiest time 
of her literary life did she ever entirely cease 
to exercise her skill in this feminine occupa- 
tion. In fact, she made wool-work her artistic 
recreation. 

But with all her liking for needle-work, and 
with all the use that she made of her skill in 
the art, she did feel very keenly how much her 
time and strength had been wasted in child- 
hood upon the practice of this mechanical occu- 
pation that should have been employed in the 
cultivation of her mental powers. A girl then 
was required to become a proficient in the 
making of every kind of garment. It v/as con- 
sidered a good test of her capacity to know at 
an early age how to cut out and put together a 
shirt for her father; drawing threads to cut it 
by, and drawing threads to do the rows of fine 
stitching by, and stitching evenly and regularly, 
only two threads of the finest material being 
taken for each stitch! The expenditure of time 
out of a girl's life, involved in making her capa- 
ble of doing all this, was something shocking. 



24 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

In these days, when the development of the 
means of communication has made division of 
labor more generally practicable than of old, 
and when nearly all men and women, from the 
richest to the artizan classes, wear garments 
made chiefly by machinery, I doubt if many 
readers can be got to realize how much a girl's 
intellectual training was diminished when Har- 
riet Martineau was a child by the vast amount 
of time consumed in training her as a seam- 
stress. Harriet was taught how to make all 
her own clothes, even to covering shoes with 
silk for dancing, and to plaiting straw bonnets. 
It is as though every boy were taught in his 
school-life to be a thorough carpenter, so as to 
be able, in youth, to turn out, unaided, any arti- 
cle of furniture. It is obvious how much time 
such technical training must swallow up. To 
conceive how a girl was held back by it, we 
must ask ourselves : What was her brother 
doing while she was learning needle-work } 

The matter did not end with the waste of 
time alone. Health, strength and nerve-force 
— in a yNox^, power — was squandered upon it 
to a degree truly lamentable. Harriet Marti- 
neau's testimony* upon this point may be 
taken, because of her real fondness for the 
employment and the skill which she displayed 
in it : 

* Household Education, p. 286. 



AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL. 25 

" I believe it is now generally agreed among 
those who know best that the practice of 
sewing has been carried much too far for 
health, even in houses where there is no poverty 
or pressure of any kind. No one can well be 
more fond of sewing than I am, and few, except 
professional seamstresses, have done more of 
it, and my testimony is that it is a most hurtful 
occupation, except where great moderation is 
observed. I think it is not so much the sitting 
and stooping posture as the incessant monoto- 
nous action and position of the arms that 
causes such wear and tear. Whatever it may 
be, there is something in prolonged sewing 
which is remarkably exhausting to the strength, 
and irritating beyond endurance to the nerves. 
The censorious gossip, during sewing, which 
was the bane of our youth," she adds, ''wasted 
more of our precious youthful powers and dis- 
positions than any repentance and amendment 
in after life could repair." 

Harriet's reading for pleasure in childhood 
had mostly to be done by snatches. She 
learned much poetry by keeping the book 
under her work, on her lap, and glancing at a 
line now and another then. Shakespeare she 
first enjoyed, while a child, by stealing away 
from table in the evenings of one winter, and 
reading by the light of the drawing-room fire, 
while the rest lingered over dessert in the 
dining-room. In this way, too, she had to read 
the newspaper. 



26 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

The older she grew, the less time was afforded 
her from domestic duties for study. She was 
sent, at the age of fourteen, to a boarding- 
school near Bristol, kept by an aunt of her 
own, where she stayed fifteen months, and on 
her return home her education was considered 
finished. Thenceforth it was a struggle to 
obtain permission to spend any time in reading 
or writing, and such opportunities as she got, 
or could make, had to be taken advantage of 
in secresy. 

It is melancholy to read of her "spending a 
frightful amount of time in sewing," and being 
" expected always to sit down in the parlor to 
sew," instead of studying; of her being "at 
the work-table regularly after breakfast, making 
my own clothes or the shirts of the household, 
or about some fancy work, or if ever I shut 
myself into my own room for an hour of soli- 
tude, I knew it was at the risk of being sent 
for to join the sewing-circle;" and of the 
necessity that she lay under to find time for 
study by stealing secret hours from sleep. But 
it is needful to lay stress upon these hindrances 
through which the growing girl fought her 
way to mental development. Wide though her 
knowledge was, great though her mental powers 
became, who can tell how much was taken from 
her possibilities (as from those of all other 



AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL. 2/ 

great women of the past) by such waste of her 
powers in childhood and youth ? 

It is distressing to think about. The only 
comfort is that it was inevitable. Of all the 
causes that unite to make the women of the 
present more favorably circumstanced than 
those of the past, none is more potent than 
the progress of mechanical discovery having 
relieved them from the necessity of making all 
the clothing of mankind with their own hands. 
From the era when Errina, the Greek poetess, 
mournfully lamented that her mother tied 
her to her distaff, down to the days in which 
Harriet Martineau studied by snatches, and 
spent her days in making shirts in the parlor, 
an enormous amount of feminine power has 
been squandered wastef ully in this direction. If 
women hereafter draw out a Comtist calendar 
of days upon which to reverence the memory 
of those who have helped them on in the scale 
of beings, assuredly they must find places for 
the inventors of the spinning-mule, the stock- 
ing-loom and the sewing-machine. 

Religion formed the chief source of happi- 
ness to Harriet Martineau in childhood and 
early youth. Her parents were Unitarians, and 
their child's theology was, therefore, of a mild 
type, lacking a hell, a personal devil, a theory 
of original sin, and the like. She did not fear 



28 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

God, while she feared almost all human beings, 
and her devotion was thus a source of great joy 
and little misery. 

When she was at the Bristol boarding-school, 
she came under the ministerial influence of the 
great Unitarian preacher, the Rev. Dr. Car- 
penter. The power of his teaching increased 
the ardor of her religious sentiments. She was 
just at an intense age — between fourteen and 
sixteen. Dr. Carpenter's religious instructions 
made the theism in which she had been edu- 
cated become a firm personal* conviction, and 
caused the natural action of a sensitive con- 
science, the self-devotion and humility of a 
deep power of veneration, and the truthfulness 
and sincerity of a rare courage, to be blended 
indistinguishably in their exercise with emo- 
tional outpourings of the spirit in worship, and 
with attachment to certain theological tenets. 

Her younger sister* well remembers that 
Harriet's fervent and somewhat gloomy piety 
was the cause of a good deal of quizzing 
amongst her elders, when she returned home 
from Bristol ; their amusement being mixed, 
however, with much respect for her sincerity 
and conscientiousness. But, as her mind 
expanded, she thought as well as felt about her 
theology, and her religious development did not 
end with childhood. 



CHAPTER II. 

EARLY WOMANHOOD : DEVELOPING INFLUENCES. 

Old Norwich, in the early years of this century, 
was a somewhat exceptional place. It so 
chanced that besides the exclusiveness natural 
even now to the society of a cathedral town — 
besides the insular tone of thought and man- 
ners which most towns possessed. in those pre- 
railway days, and while our continental wars 
were holding our country-people isolated from 
foreign nations — besides all this, Norwich then 
prided herself upon having produced a good deal 
of literary ability. Her William Taylor was 
considered to be almost the only German scholar 
in Eno^land, and. other men, whose names are 
now nearly forgotten, but who in their day were 
looked up to as lights of learning and litera- 
ture — Sayers, Smith, Enfield, Alderson, and 
others, — gave a tone to the society of Norwich, 
which, if somewhat pedantic, was, nevertheless, 
favorable to the intellectual life. It is no small 
testimony to the healthy and stimulating men- 
tal atmosphere of old Norwich that there sue- 



30 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

cessively came out from her, in an age when 
individuality and intellect in woman were stead- 
ily repressed, three women of such mark as 
Amelia Opie, Elizabeth Fry and Harriet Mar- 
tineau. 

But even in Norwich the repression just 
alluded to was felt by women. Even there it 
was held, to say the least, peculiar and unde- 
sirable for a girl to wish to study deep subjects. 
"When I was young," Miss Martineau writes, 
*'it was not thought proper for young ladies to 
study very conspicuously; and especially with 
pen in hand." They were required to be always 
ready ''to receive callers, without any sign of 
blue-stockingism which could be reported abroad. 
My first studies in philosophy were carried on 
with great care and reserve. ... I won time 
for what my heart was set upon either in the 
early morning or late at night." 

It was thus at unseasonable hours, and with- 
out the encouraging support of that public 
feeling of the value and desirability of knowl- 
edge, and the honorableness of its acquisition, 
by which a young man's studies are uncon- 
sciously aided, that Harriet in her young woman- 
hood continued to learn. She read Latin with 
her brother James, and translated from the 
classics by herself. Her cousin, Mr. Lee, read 
Italian with her and her sister ; and in course 



EARLY WOMANHOOD. 3 I 

o£ time they undertook the translation of 
Petrarch's sonnets into Enghsh verse. She read 
Blair's Rhetoric repeatedly. Her Biblical stud- 
ies were continued until she was in that position 
which, according to Macaulay, is necessary "for 
a critic of the niceties of the English language ; " 
she had ''the Bible at her fingers' ends." 

But her solitary studies went also into heavier 
and less frequented paths. Dr. Carpenter had 
taught her to interest herself in mental and 
moral philosophy. She read about these sub- 
jects at first because he had written upon them, 
and afterwards because she found them really 
congenial to her mind. Locke and Hartley 
were the authors whom she studied most closely. 
Then the works of Priestley, and the study of his 
life and opinions — which she naturally under- 
took, because Dr. Priestley was the great apos- 
tle and martyr of Unitarianism — led her to 
make a very full acquaintance with the meta- 
physicians of the Scotch school. 

To how much purpose she thus read the best 
books then available, upon some of the highest 
topics that can engage the attention, soon 
became apparent when she began to write ; but 
of this I must speak in due course later on. 
Two other of the most important events, or 
rather trains of events, in the history of her 
young womanhood, must be mentioned first. 



32 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

The earlier of these was the gradual on- 
coming and increase of her deafness. She 
began to be slightly deaf while she was at Mr. 
Perry's school, and the fact was there recognized 
so far as to cause her to be placed next to her 
teacher in the class. How keenly she even then 
felt this loss, she has in part revealed in the 
story of Hugh Procter ; and a few lines from an 
essay of hers on Scott may here be added : 

"Few have any idea of the all-powerful influ- 
ence which the sense of personal infirmity 
exerts over the mind of a child. If it were 
known, its apparent disproportionateness to 
other influences would, to the careless observer, 
appear absurd ; to the thoughtful it would afford 
new lights respecting the conduct of educa- 
tional discipline ; it would also pierce the heart 
of many a parent who now believes that he 
knows all, and who feels so tender a regret for 
what he knows that even the sufferer wonders 
at its extent. But this is a species of suffering 
which can never obtain suf^cient sympathy, 
because the sufferer himself is not aware, till he 
has made comparison of this with other pains, 
how light all others are in comparison." 

As pathetically, but more briefly, she says 
about herself : — "My deafness, when new, was 
the uppermost thing in my mind day and 
night." 



EARLY WOMANHOOD. 33 

Her inability to hear continued to increase 
by slow degrees during the next six years ; and 
when she was eighteen "a sort of accident" 
suddenly increased it. Music had, until then, 
been one of her great delights, and it shows 
how gradual was the progress of her deafness, 
that she found herself able to hear at an orches- 
tral concert, provided she could get a seat with 
a back against which she could press her 
shoulder-blades, for a long time after the music 
had become inaudible without this assistance. 
Such a gradual deprivation of a most important 
sense is surely far more trying than a quick, 
unexpected, and obviously irremediable loss 
would be. The alternations of hope and de- 
spair, the difficulty of inducing the sufferer's 
friends to recognize how serious the case is, 
the perhaps yet greater difficulty to the patient 
to resolutely step out of the ranks of ordinary 
people and take up the position of one deficient 
in a sense, the mortifications which have to 
be endured again and again both from the igno- 
rance of strangers and the mistaken sympathy 
of friends — all these make up the special trial 
of one who becomes by degrees the subject of 
a chronic affection. No sensitive person can 
possibly pass through this fiery trial unchanged. 
Such an experience must either refine or 
harden ; must either strengthen the powers of 



34 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

endurance or break down the mind to querulous 
ill-temper ; must either make self the centre of 
creation or greatly add to the power of putting 
personal interests aside for the sake of wider 
and more unselfish thoughts and feelings. 
Which class of influences Harriet Martineau 
accepted from her trial the history of her cour- 
ageous, resolute life-work, and her devotion to 
truth and duty as she saw them, will sufficiently 
show. 

How much she suffered in mind was quite 
unknown to her family at the time. She was 
always reserved in speaking about her own 
feelings and emotions to her mother, and in 
this particular case Mrs. Martineau, with the 
kindest intentions, discouraged, as far as possi- 
ble, all recognition of the growing infirmity. 
The society of Norwich had never been very 
attractive to the young girl, who was above the 
average in natural abilities, and still further 
removed from the petty and frivolous gossip of 
the commonplace evening party, by the exten- 
sive and elevating course of study through 
which her mind had passed. Had she been 
well able to hear, she could have quietly ac- 
cepted what such intercourse could give her. 
This would have been much. Kindliness and 
good feeling, common sense, and ideas about 
man and his circumstances, are to be enjoyed 



EARLY WOMANHOOD. 35 

and gained quite as much in ordinary as in what 
is commonly called intellectual society. But 
in the freshness of her sensitive suffering Har- 
riet shrank from the Norwich evening parties. 
Her mother, however, insisted upon her taking 
her full share of visiting. 

The case was made worse by the customary 
errors in the treatment of deaf persons ; namely, 
the endeavoring to keep up the illusion that 
she was not deaf, the occasional assurances that 
she could hear as well as ever if it were not 
for her habits of abstraction, and so forth, and 
the imploring her to always ask when she did 
not hear what was said, followed by scoldings 
(kindly meant, but none the less irritating to 
the object) when it was found that she had 
been silently losing the larger part of a conver- 
sation. False pride, pretence, and selfish exac- 
tions were thus sought to be nourished in her ; 
while the blessings of an open recognition of 
her trouble, and a full and free sympathy with 
her pain and her difficulty in learning to bear 
it, were at the same time withheld. 

I have spoken of this method of treatment 
of such a case as erroneous. But in such a 
matter only those who have gone through the 
experience and have come out of it at last, as 
she did, with the moral nature strengthened, 
and the power of self-management increased, 



36 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

can be really competent to express an opinion 
upon the proper method of behavior to similar 
sufferers. I hasten to add, therefore, that in 
substance the view that I have given is that 
expressed in Harriet Martineau's Letter to the 
Deafy published in 1834. In that remarkable 
fragment of autobiography she appealed to 
the large number of people who suffered like 
herself, to insist upon the frank recognition of 
their infirmity, and to themselves acquiesce 
with patience in all the deprivations and morti- 
fications which the loss of a sense must bring. 
The revelation in this essay of her own suffer- 
ings is most touching ; and very noble and 
beautiful is the way in which she urges that the 
misery must be met, and the humiliation must 
be turned aside, by no other means than cour- 
age, candor, patience, and an unselfish deter- 
mination to consider first the convenience and 
happiness of others instead of the sufferer's 
own. 

*' Instead of putting the singularity out of 
sight we should acknowledge it in words, pre- 
pare for it in habits, and act upon it in social 
intercourse. Thus only can we save others 
from being uneasy in our presence, and sad 
when they think of us. That we can thus alone 
make ourselves sought and beloved is an infe- 
rior consideration, though an important one to 
us, to whom warmth and kindness are as pecu- 



EARLY WOMANHOOD. 37 

liarly animating as sunshine to the caged bird. 
This frankness, simpHcity, and cheerfulness 
can only grow out of a perfect acquiescence in 
our circumstances. Submission is not enough. 
Pride fails at the most critical moment. But 
hearty acquiescence cannot fail to bring forth 
cheerfulness. The thrill of delight which 
arises during the ready agreement to profit by 
pain (emphatically the joy with which no 
stranger intermeddleth) must subside like all 
other emotions ; but it does not depart without 
leaving the spirit lightened and cheered ; and 
every visitation leaves it in a more genial state 
than the last. ... I had infinitely rather bear 
the perpetual sense of privation than become 
unaware of anything which is true — of my 
intellectual deficiences, of my disqualifications 
for society, of my errors in matter of fact, and 
of the burdens that I necessarily impose on 
those who surround me. We can never get 
beyond the necessity of keeping in full view 
the worst and the best that can be made of our 
lot. The worst is either to sink under the trial 
or to be made callous by it. The best is to be 
as wise as possible under a great disability, and 
as happy as possible under a great privation." 

It is essential, for a correct understanding of 
her character, that this great trial of her youth 
should be presented amidst the moulding influ- 
ences of that time with as much strength as it 
was experienced. But it is difficult, within the 
necessary limits of quotation, to convey an idea 



38 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

to the reader of either the intensity and bitter- 
ness of the suffering revealed, or of the firm- 
ness and beauty of the spirit with which the 
trial was met. Nor was the advice that she 
gave to others mere talk, which she herself 
never put in practice. If her family did not 
realize at the time how deeply she suffered, still 
less could her friends in later life discover by 
anything in her manners that her soul had been 
so searched and her spirits so tried. So frankly 
and candidly, and with such an utter absence of 
affectation, did she accept this condition of her 
life, that those around her hardly realized that 
she felt it as a deprivation ; and a few lines 
in her autobiography, in which she mentions 
how conscious she was of intellectual fatigue 
from the lack of those distractions to the mind 
which enter continually through the normal ear, 
came like a painful shock to her friends, mak- 
ing them feel that they had been unconscious 
of a need ever present with her throughout life. 
For some time after the deafness began, she 
did not use an ear-trumpet. Like many in a 
similar position, she persuaded herself that her 
deafness was not sufficiently great to cause any 
considerable inconvenience to others in conver- 
sation. At length, however, she was enlight- 
ened upon this point. An account appeared in 
a Unitarian paper of two remarkable cures of 



EARLY WOMANHOOD. 39 

deafness by galvanism, and Harriet's friends 
persuaded her to try this new remedy. For a 
brief while, hope was revived in her ; the treat- 
ment threw her into a state of nervous fever, 
during which she regained considerable sensi- 
bility in the organ of hearing. The improve- 
ment was very temporary, but it lasted suffi- 
ciently long to let her know how much her 
friends had been straining their throats for her 
sake. From that time she invariably carried 
and used an ear-trumpet, commencing with an 
india-rubber tube, with a cup at the end for 
the speaker to take into his hand, but after- 
wards employing an ordinary stiff trumpet. 

Into this existence, which had hitherto been 
so full of sadness, there came at length the 
bright-tinted and vivid shower of light, which 
means so much to a woman. Love came to 
brighten the life so dark hitherto for lack of that 
sunshine. Much as it is to any woman to know 
herself beloved by the man whom she loves, to 
Harriet Martineau it was even more than to 
most. It was not only that her character was 
a strong one, and that to such a nature all influ- 
ences that are accepted become powerful forces, 
but besides this she had always loved more than 
she had been loved ; and her self-esteem had 
been systematically suppressed by her mother's 
stern discipline, and afterwards injured by the 



40 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

mortifications to which the on-coming of her 
deafness gave rise. How much, in such a case, 
it must have been, when the hour at last came 
for the history of the heart to be written ! How 
dehghtful the time when she could cherish in 
her thoughts a love which was at once an equal 
friendship and a vivid passion ! How great the 
revolution in her mind when she found that the 
man whom she could love would choose her 
from all the world of women to be his dearest, 
the partner of his life ! 

It would be a proof, if proof were needed at 
this time of day, that it is well-nigh impossible 
for any person to give a candid, full and uner- 
ring record of his own past, and the circum- 
stances in it which have most influenced his 
development, to turn from the brief and cursory 
record which Harriet Martineau's autobiography 
gives of this attachment, to the complete story 
as I have it to tell, here and in a future chapter. 

The strongest of all the family affections of 
her childhood and youth was that which she 
felt for her brother James. He was two years 
younger than herself. They had been play- 
mates in childhood, and companions in study 
later on. Harriet's first attraction to Mr. 
Worthington was that he was her brother's 
friend. The two young men were fellow- 
students at college, preparing for the Unitarian 



li 



EARLY WOMANHOOD. 4 1 

ministry. Worthington was already well known 
to Harriet from her brother's letters before 
she saw him. He then went on a visit to 
Norwich, to spend a part of the vacation with 
James, and the interest which the friend and 
the sister already felt in each other, from their 
mutual affection for the brother, soon ripened 
into love. This was, I believe, in 1822, when 
she was twenty years old. 

Her father and mother looked not unkindly 
upon the dawning of this affection. The 
brother, however, who knew the two so well, 
felt quite certain that they were not suited for 
each other. Harriet was of a strong, decided 
temper, even somewhat arbitrary and hasty, 
quick in her judgments, and firm in her 
opinions. The temperament of Worthington, 
on the other hand, was, I am told, gentle, im- 
pressionable and sensitive in the extreme. He 
was highly conscientious, and ultra-tender in 
his treatment of the characters and opinions 
of others. The two seemed in many respects 
the antipodes of each other. He who knew 
th^m both best was convinced that they would 
not bs happy together, and that opinion he has 
never changed. 

It is above all things difficult to predict 
beforehand whether two apparently antago- 
nistic characters will really clash and jar in the 



42 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

close union of married life, or whether, on 
the contrary, the deficiencies of the one will 
be supplemented by those opposite tendencies 
which are rather in excess in the other. It is 
notorious that marriages are seldom perfect 
matches in the view of outsiders ; the incon- 
gruities in the temperaments and the habits of 
life and thought, are more easily discerned than 
the fusing influence of ardent love can be 
measured. Nor, indeed, can the changes which 
will be worked in the disposition by a surrender 
to the free play of emotion be accurately fore- 
seen. Considerations such as these, however, 
do not have much weight in the mind of a 
young man whose experience of the mysteries 
of the human heart is yet to come ; and James 
Martineau was strongly averse to the engage- 
ment of his sister and his friend. Their 
attachment was not then permitted to become 
an engagement. Worthington was poor — was 
still only a student — Harriet was supposed, at 
that time, to be well portioned ; the sensitive 
temperament of the young lover felt the variety 
of discouragements placed in the path of his 
affection, and so that affection which should 
have brought only joy became, in fact, to 
Harriet the cause of sorrow, suspense and 
anxiety. Yet its vivifying influence was felt, 
and the true happiness which is inseparable 



EARLY WOMANHOOD. 43 

from mutual love, however the emotion be 
checked and denied its full expression, was not 
lacking. For some insight into what Harriet 
Martineau knew and felt of love, we must look 
elsewhere than in the formal record of the 
Autobiography.* But this, like all the other 
chief events of her life, has found a place in 
her works under a thin veiling of her person- 
ality. Let us see from one of her early essays 
how Harriet Martineau learned to regard love. 
The essay is called ''In a Hermit's Cave." 

''The place was not ill-chosen by the holy man, 
if the circumstances could but have been adapted 
to that highest worship — the service of the life. 
. . . But there is yet wanting the altar of the 
human heart, on which alone a fire is kindled 
from above to shine in the faces of all true wor- 

* Mr. H. G. Atkinson writes to me : *' She had written 
much more at length (than is published) in her Autobiography 
about her courtship ; but she consulted me about publishing 
it, and I advised her not to do so — the matter counted for 
so little in such a life as hers." The quotation which I give 
here shows for what it did really count in the history of her 
mental development. But so difficult must it needs be for 
the writer of an autobiography to speak frankly of the more 
sacred experiences of the life, that it is not surprising that 
Harriet Martineau " destroyed what she had written," when 
so advised by the friend whom she consulted. I need only 
add that the many new details about the facts of this matter, 
which I am able to give, I have received from two of her 
own generation, both of whom were very intimate friends of 
hers at the time when all this occurred. 



44 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

shippers for ever. Where this flame, the glow 
of human love, is burning, there is the temple 
of worship, be it only beside the humblest vil- 
lage hearth : where it has not been kindled there 
is no sanctuary ; and the loftiest amphitheatre 
of mountains, lighted up by the ever-burning 
stars, is no more the dwelling-place of Jehovah 
than the Temple of Solomon before it was filled 
with the glory of the Presence. . . . 

Yes, Love is worshijD, authorized and approved. 
. . . Many are the gradations through which 
this service rises until it has reached that on 
which God has bestowed His most manifest 
benediction, on which Jesus smiled at Cana, 
but which the devotee presumed to decline. 
Not more express were the ordinances of Sinai 
than the Divine provisions for wedded love ; 
never was it more certain that Jehovah benig- 
nantly regarded the festivals of His people than 
it is daily that He has appointed those mutual 
rejoicings of the affections, which need but to 
be referred to Him to become a holy homage. 
Yet there have been many who pronounce com- 
mon that which God has purified, and reject or 
disdain that which He has proffered and blest 
How ignorant must such be of the growth of 
that within ! How unobservant of what passes 
without ! Would that all could know how from 
the first flow of the affections, until they are 
shed abroad in their plentitude, the purposes of 
creation become fulfilled. Would that all could 
know how, by this mighty impulse, new strength 
is given to every power ; how the intellect is 
vivified and enlarged ; how the spirit becomes 



EARLY WOMANHOOD. 45 

bold to explore the path of life, and clear-sighted 

to discern its issues For that piety which 

has humanity for its object — must not that 
heart feel most of which tenderness has become 
the element ? Must not the spirit which is most 
exercised in hope and fear be most familiar with 
hope and fear wherever found ? 

How distinctly I saw all this in those who are 
now sanctifying their first Sabbath of wedded 
love. . . . The one was at peace with all that 
world which had appeared so long at war with 
him. He feared nothing, he possessed all ; and 
of the overflowings of his love he could spare to 
every living thing. The other thought of no 
world but the bright one above, and the quiet 
one before her, in each of which dwelt one in 
whom she had perfect trust. ... In her the pro- 
gression has been so regular, and the work so 
perfect, that' any return to the former per- 
turbations of her spirit seems impossible. She 
entered upon a new life when her love began ; 
and it is as easy to conceive that there is one 
Life Giver to the body, and another to the spirit, 
as that this progression is not the highest work 
of God on earth, and its results abounding to 
His praise. . . . To those who know them as I 
know them, they appear already possessed of an 
experience in comparison with which it would 
appear little to have looked abroad from the 
Andes, or explored the treasure-caves of the 
deep, or to have conversed with every nation 
under the sun. If they could see all that the 
eyes of the firmament look upon, and hear all 
the whispered secrets that the roving winds bear 



46 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

in their bosoms, they could learn but little new ; 
for the deepest mysteries are those of human 
love, and the vastest knowledge is that of the 
human heart." 

Even more vividly, at a later period, she told 
something of her experiences in one of her 
fictions, under the guise of a conversation 
between a young husband and wife : — 

" Do you really think there are any people 
that have passed through life without knowing 
what that moment was, that stir in one's heart 
on being first sure that one is beloved? It is 
most like the soul getting free of the body and 
rushing into Paradise, I should think. Do you 
suppose anybody ever lived a life without hav- 
ing felt this V 

Walter feared it might be so ; but, if so, a 
man missed the moment that made a man of 
one that was but an unthinking creature before ; 
and a woman the moment best worth living 
for. . . 

" It seems to me," said Effie, " that though 
God has kindly given this token of blessedness 
to all — or to so many that we may nearly say 
all — without distinction of great or humble, 
rich or poor, the great and the lowly use them- 
selves to the opposite faults. The great do not 
seem to think it the most natural thing to 
marry where they first love ; and the lowly are 
too ready to love." 

*' That is because the great have too many 
things to look to besides love ; and the lowly 



EARLY WOMANHOOD. 47 

have too few. The rich have their lighted 
palaces to bask in, as well as the sunshine ; and 
they must have a host. of admirers, as well as 
one bosom friend. And when the poor man 
finds that there is one bliss that no power on 
earth can shut him out from, and one that 
drives out all evils for the time — one that 
makes him forget the noon-day heats, and one 
that tempers the keen north wind, and makes 
him walk at his full height when his superiors 
lounge past him in the street — no wonder he 
is eager to meet it, and jogs the time-glass to 
make it come at the soonest. If such a man is 
imprudent, I had rather be he than one that 
first lets it slip through cowardice, and would 
then bring it back to gratify his low ambition ! " 

"And for those who let it go by for con- 
science sake, and do not ask for it again .'* " 

** Why, they are happy in having learned what 
the one feeling is that life is zvorth living for. 
They may make themselves happy upon it for 
ever, after that. Oh! Effie, you would not 
believe, nothing could make you believe, what 
I was the day before and the day after I saw 
that sudden change of look of yours that told 
me all. The one day, I was shrinking inwardly 
from everything I had to do, and every word of 
my father's, and everybody I met ; and was 
always trying to make myself happy in myself 
alone, with the sense of God being near me 
and with me. The other day, I looked down 
upon everybody, in a kindly way ; and yet I 
looked up to them, too, for I felt a respect that 
I never knew before for all that were suffering 



48 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

and enjoying; and I felt as if I could have 
brought the whole world nearer to God, if they 
would have listened to me. I shall never forget 
the best moment of all — when my mind had 
suddenly ceased being in a great tumult, which 
had as much pain as pleasure in it. When I 
said distinctly to myself, 'She loves me,' 
Heaven came down round about me that 
minute."* 

This tells how Harriet Martineau could love 
in her youth. Perhaps the stream ran all the 
more powerfully for its course being checked ; 
for it was over three years after she met and 
became attached to Mr. Worthington before 
their love was allowed to be declared, and their 
engagement was permitted — a long period for 
hope and fear to do their painful office in the 
soul, a long test of the reality of the love on 
both sides. 

Her extensive and deep studies, her suffer- 
ings and inward strivings from her deafness, 
and the joys and anxieties of her love, were 
the chief moulding influences of her early 
womanhood. We shall soon see how she came 
to seek expression for the results of all these 
in literature. 

* Illustrations of Political Economy : " A Tale of the T5'ne," 
pp. 54, et seq. This passage is doubly interesting from the 
fact that Mr. Malthus, the discoverer of the Population Law, 
sent specially to thank her for having written it. 



CHAPTER III. 

EARLIEST WRITINGS. 

Harriet Martineau's first attempt to write 
for publication was made in the same year that 
her acquaintance with Mr. Worthington was 
formed; in 1822, when she was twenty years 
old. It was, apparently, at the close of the 
vacation in which Worthington had visited his 
friend Martineau at Norwich, that she com- 
menced a paper with the design of offering it 
to the Unitarian magazine, The MontJdy Re- 
pository. She had told James that when he 
had returned to college she should be miser- 
able, and he had, with equal kindness and sense, 
advised her to try to forget her feelings about 
the parting by an attempt at authorship. On a 
bright September morning, therefore, when she 
had seen him start by the early coach, soon 
after six, she sat down in her own room with a 
supply of foolscap paper before her to write 
her first article. 

The account which she — writing from mem- 
ory — gives in her autobiography, of this little 



so HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

transaction, is curiously inaccurate, as far as the 
trifling details are concerned. Her own state- 
ment is that she took the letter ''V" for her 
signature, and that she found her paper printed 
in the next number of the magazine, *' and in 
the 'Notices to Correspondents' a request to 
hear more from *V' of Norwich." Her little 
errors about these facts must be corrected, 
because the truth of the matter is at once sug- 
gestive and amusing. 

The article may be found in the Monthly 
Repository for October, 1822. It is signed, not 
"V," but "Discipulus." This, it need hardly 
be pointed out, is the niascidine form of the 
Latin for learner, or apprentice. The note in 
the correspondents' column is not in that same 
month's magazine ; but in the number for the 
succeeding month, the editor says in his 
answers to correspondents : "The continuation 
of 'Discipulus' has come to hand, ///j- other 
proposed communications will probably be 
acceptable." If more proofs than these were 
required that the youthful authoress had pre- 
sented herself to her editor in a manly disguise, 
it would be furnished by a passage in one of 
these *' Discipulus " articles, in which she defi- 
nitely figures herself as a masculine writer, 
speaking of ''our sex" {i. e. the male sex) as a 
man would do. The interesting fact is thus 



EARLIEST WRITINGS. 5 1 

disclosed that Harriet Martineau adds another 
to the group of the most eminent women writers 
of this century who thought it necessary to 
assume the masculine sex in order to obtain a 
fair hearing and an impartial judgment for their 
earliest work. Surely, as our '' Discipulus " 
takes her place in this list with George Eliot, 
George Sand, and Currer, Elhs, and Acton 
Bell, great deal is disclosed to us about how 
women in the past have had to make their way 
to recognition against the tide of public opinion. 

That first printed essay is interesting because 
it was the precursor of so long a course of liter- 
ary work, rather than for itself. Yet it is not 
without its own interest, and is very far indeed 
from being the crude, imperfect performance 
of the ordinary amateur. The subject is ''Fe- 
male Writers of Practical Divinity." Here are 
the first words that Harriet Martineau uttered 
through the press : 

" I do not know whether it has been re- 
marked by others as well as myself, that some 
of the finest and most useful English works on 
the subject of practical Divinity are by female 
authors. I suppose it is owing to the peculiar 
susceptibility of the female mind, and its con- 
sequent warmth of feeling, that its productions, 
wh'en they are really valuable, find a more 
ready way to the heart than those of the other 



52 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

sex ; and it gives me great pleasure to see 
women gifted with superior talents applying 
those talents to promote the cause of religion 
and virtue." 

There is nothing remarkable in the literary 
form of this first article. How soon she came 
to have a style of her own, vivid, stirring, and 
instinct with a powerful individuality, may have 
been gathered already from the quotations 
given in our last chapter. But in her first 
paper the style is coldly correct ; imitative of 
good but severe models, and displaying none 
of the writer's individuality. Two points as 
regards the matter of the essay are of special 
interest, and thoroughly characteristic. It is 
interesting, in the first place, to know that she 
who was destined to do probably more than any 
other one woman of her century for the en- 
largement of the sphere of her sex in the field 
of letters, should have written her first article 
on the subject of the capacity of women to 
teach through their writings. The second 
point worth noticing is that her idea of ''prac- 
tical Divinity " is simply, good conduct. The- 
ological disputation and dogma do not disturb 
her pages. Her view of practical Divinity is 
that it teaches morals ; and it is largely because 
the women to whose writings she draws atten- 
tion have occupied themselves with the attempt 



EARLIEST WRITINGS, 53 

to trace out rules of conduct, that she is inter- 
ested in their writings, and rejoices in their 
labors. Indeed, she only alludes once to the 
opinions on dogmatic theology of the writers 
whom she quotes, and then she does it only to 
put aside with scorn the idea that morality and 
teaching should be rejected because of differ- 
ences upon points of theology. 

Encouraged by the few stately words with 
which the editor of the Repository had received 
the offer of more contributions, ''Discipulus " 
continued his literary labors, and the result 
appeared in a paper on ''Female Education," 
published in the Monthly Repository of Febru- 
ary, 1823. This is a noble and powerful appeal 
for the higher education of girls and the full 
development of all the powers of our sex. It 
is written with gentleness and tact, but it 
courageously asserts and demands much that 
was strange indeed to the tone of that day, 
though it has become quite commonplace in 
ours. 

The author (supposed to be a man, be it 
remembered,) disclaimed any intention of prov- 
ing that the minds of women were equal to 
those of men, but only desired to show that 
what little powers the female intellect might 
possess should be fully cultivated. Neverthe- 
less, the fact was pointed out that women had 



54 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

seldom had a chance of showing how near they 
might be able to equal men intellectually, for 
while the lad was at the higher school and 
college, preparing his mind for a future, *'the 
girl is probably confined to low pursuits, her 
aspirings after knowledge are subdued, she is 
taught to believe that solid information is 
unbecoming her sex ; almost her whole time is 
expended on low accomplishments, and thus, 
before she is sensible of her powers, they are 
checked in their growth and chained down to 
mean objects, to rise no more; and when the 
natural consequences of this mode of treatment 
are seen, all mankind agree that the abilities 
of women are far inferior to those of men," 
Having shown reasons to believe that women 
would take advantage of higher opportunities 
if such were allowed them, "Discipulus " main- 
tained in detail that the cultivation of their 
minds would improve them for all the accepted 
feminine duties of life, charitable, domestic 
and social, and that the consequent elevation 
of the female character would react beneficially 
on the male; cited the -works of a cluster of 
eminent authoresses, as showing that women 
could think upon "the noblest subjects that 
can exercise the human mind ; " and closed with 
the following paragraph, wherein occurred the 
phrases by which it is shown that our "Dirc^'- 



EARLIEST WRITINGS. 55 

pulus " of twenty is masquerading as a man, 
more decisively even than by the termination 
of the Latin noiii de guerre : 

" I cannot better conclude than with the 
hope that these examples of what may be done 
may excite a noble emulation in their own sex, 
and in ours such a conviction of the value of 
the female mind, as shall overcome ottr long- 
cherished prejudices, and induce tts to give ottr 
earnest endeavors to the promotion of zvomens 
best interests.3f 

It is most interesting to thus discover that 
Harriet Martineau's first writings were upon 
that "woman question" which she lived to 
see make such wonderful advances, and which 
she so much forwarded, both by her direct 
advocacy, and by the indirect influence of the 
proof which she afforded, that a woman may be 
a thinker upon high topics and a teacher and 
leader of men in practical politics, and yet not 
only be irreproachable in her private life, but 
even show herself throughout it, in the best 
sense, truly feminine. 

Harriet contributed nothing more to the 
Monthly Repository after this (so far as can now 
be ascertained), for a considerable time. En- 
couraged by the success of her first attempts 
with periodicals, she commenced a book of a 
distinctly religious character, which was issued 



$6 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

in the autumn of the same year, 18^3, by Hunter, 
of St. Paul's Churchyard. 

The httle volume was published anonymously. 
Its title-page runs thus : ^' Devotional Exercises; 
consisting of Reflections and Prayers for the 
use of Young Persons. To which is added an 
Address on Baptism. By a lady." 

The character of the work is perhaps suffi- 
ciently indicated by the title. But it would be 
a mistake to suppose that the book is a common- 
place one. It contains a good deal of dogma- 
tism and many platitudes. It contains, likewise, 
however, many a noble thought and many a 
high aspiration, expressed in words equally 
flowing and fervent. A ''Reflection" (some- 
thing like a short sermon) and a prayer are sup- 
plied for each morning and each evening of the 
seven days of the week. She had already 
attained to such an insight into the human mind 
as to recognize that religious devotion is an 
exercise of the emotions. Proof, too, is given 
in this little work of the fullness with which she 
realized that true religion must be expressed by 
service to mankind ; to those nearest to one first, 
and afterwards to others ; and indeed, that a 
high sense of social duty, with a fervent and 
unselfish devotion to it, is religion, rather than 
either the spiritual dram-drinking, or the dog- 
matic irrationality to which that name of high 
import is frequently applied. 



EARLIEST WRITINGS. 5/ 

The prayers in this little volume differ much 
from the supplications for personal benefits 
which are commonly called prayers. 

These are rather aspirations, or meditations. 
The highest moral attributes, personified in 
God, are held up for the worship of the imper- 
fect human creature, with fervent aspiration to 
approach as nearly as possible towards that light 
of unsullied goodness. 

The lack of petitions for material benefits 
which appears in these "Devotions" was by no 
means unconscious, instinctive, or accidental. 
She had deliberately given up the practice of 
praying for personal benefits, partly because 
she held that, since it is impossible for us to 
foresee how far our highest interests may be 
served or hindered by changes in our external 
circumstances, it is not for us to attempt to 
indicate, or even to form a desire, as to what 
those circumstances shall be. As regarded the 
emotional side of her religion, she had come to 
prefer to leave herself and her fate to the unques- 
tioned direction of a higher power. 

But there was more than this in it. In her 
philosophical studies, she had, of course, met 
with the eternal debates of metaphysicians and 
theologians on Foreknowledge, Fate, and Free- 
dom of the Will. The difficult question had, 
indeed, presented itself to her active and acute 



k 



58 HARRIET MARTINEAU, 

young mind long before those studies began. 
She remembered that when she was but eleven 
years old she found courage to offer her question- 
ings upon this point to her elder brother 
Thomas. She asked : If God foreknev/ from 
eternity all the evil deeds that every one of us 
should do in our lives, how can He justly punish 
us for those actions, when the time comes that 
we are born, and in due course commit them } 
Her brother replied merely that she was not 
yet old enough to understand the^ point. The 
answer did not satisfy the child. She knew 
that if she were old enough to feel the difficulty, 
she must also be mentally fit to receive some 
kind of explanation. But under the pastoral 
influence of Dr. Carpenter, the emotional side 
of her religion was cultiv^ated, and such doubts 
and difficulties of the reason were put away for 
the time. 

Not for all time, however, could the problem 
be shirked by so active, logical, and earnest a 
mind. It recurred to her when she was left to 
her own spiritual guidance. Long before the 
date of these " Devotions " she had fought out 
the battle in her own mind, and had reached 
the standpoint from which her Prayers are writ- 
ten. She had convinced herself of the truth 
of the Necessitarian doctrine, that we are what 
we are, we do what we do, because of the 



EARLIEST WRITINGS. 59 

impulses given by our previous training and 
circumstances ; and that the way to amend any 
human beings or all mankind is to improve 
their education, and to give them good sur- 
roundings and influences, and mental associa- 
tions ; in short, that physical and psychological 
phenomena alike depend upon antecedent 
phenomena, called causes. 

As soon as she had thus settled her mind in 
the doctrine of Necessity, she perceived that 
prayer, in the ordinary sense of the term, had 
become- impossible. If it be believed that all 
that happens in the world is the consequence of 
the course of the events which have happened 
before, it is clear that no petitions can alter the 
state of things at any given moment. A belief 
in the efficacy of ''beseiging Heaven with 
prayers " implies a supposition that a Supreme 
Ruler of the Universe interferes arbitrarily 
with the sequence of events. Those whose 
minds are clear that no such arbitrary inter- 
ference ever does take place, but that, on the 
contrary, like events always and invariably fol- 
low from like causes, cannot rationally ask for 
this fundamental rule of the government 6i the 
universe to be set aside for their behoof ; even 
although they may believe in an all-powerful 
Divine Ruler, who has appointed this sequence 
of events for the law under which His creatures 
shall live and develop. 



6o HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

Still, however, Harriet Martineau supplicated 
for spiritual benefits, as we have seen in the 
little volume of Devotional Exercises. These 
aspirations not only gave her an emotional 
satisfaction, but were, she then thought, justifi- 
able on necessitarian principles; for each time 
that we place our minds in a certain attitude we 
increase their " set " in the same direction ; 
and she believed at that time that a holy life 
was in this way aided by frequent reflections 
on and aspirations towards the highest ideal of 
holiness personified in the name of God. 

Her religious belief was, then, pure Theism. 
To her, it was still very good to be a worship- 
per of Jehovah, the Eternal Presence, the Ever- 
living Supreme; and Jesus was His Messenger, 
the highest type that He had ever permitted to 
be revealed to man of the excellencies of the 
divine nature. But there was no Atonement, 
no personal Evil One, no hell, no verbally- 
inspired revelation in her creed. 

It will be unnecessary to say more about her 
theological beliefs till the next twenty years 
have been recorded, for in that period there 
was substantially no change in her views. 
There did come, indeed, a change in her method 
of self-management and in her opinions as to 
the way in which religious feelings should 
affect daily life. She soon concluded that we 



EARLIEST WRITINGS. 6 1 

are best when least self-conscious about our 
own goodness, and that, therefore, we should 
rely upon receiving inspiration to right and 
elevated feelings from passing influences, and 
should refrain from putting our minds, by a 
regular exercise of volition, into affected post- 
ures in anticipation of those high emotions 
which we cannot command. Under these 
beliefs she soon ceased all formal prayer. 
Meantime she was still, at twenty-one years 
old, in the condition of mind to write Devo- 
tional Exercises. 

The little book met with a favorable accept- 
ance among the Unitarians, and speedily went 
into the second edition. Thus encouraged, 
Harriet began another volume of the same 
character. Such work could not proceed very 
fast, however, for her domestic duties were not 
light, and her writing was still looked upon in 
her family as a mere recreation. She labored 
under all the disadvantages of the amateur. 
But events soon began to crowd into her life 
to alter this view of the case, and to prepare 
the way for her beginning to do the work of 
her life in the only fashion in which such labor 
can be effectively carried on — as a serious 
occupation, the principal feature of every day's 
duties. 

After a long period of poverty and distress, 



62 HA ERIE T MA R TINEA U. 

caused by the Napoleonic wars, England, in 
1824, experienced the special dangers of a time 
of rapidly increasing wealth. There was more 
real wealth in the country, owing to the expan- 
sion of trade, which followed 'on the re-opening 
of the continent to our commerce, but specula- 
tion made this development appear far greater 
than it was in reality. 

There was, at that time, no sort of check 
upon the issue of paper money. Not only did 
the Bank of England send out notes without 
limit ; not only could every established bank 
multiply its drafts recklessly ; but any small 
tradesman who pleased might embark in the 
same business, and put forth paper money 
without check or control. Thus there was 
money in abundance, the rate of interest was 
low, and prices rose. 

The natural and inevitable consequence of 
tfiis state of things, at a moment when trade 
w^as suddenly revived, was a rage for specula- 
tion. Not only merchants and manufacturers 
were seized with this epidemic ; the desire for 
higher profits than could be obtained by quiet 
and perfectly safe investments spread amongst 
every class. *'As for what the speculation 
was like, it can hardly be recorded on the open 
page of history without a blush. Besides the 
joint-stock companies who undertook baking, 



EARLIEST WRITINGS. 6^, 

washing, baths, life insurance, brewing, coal- 
portage, wool-growing, and the like, there was 
such a rage for steam navigation, canals and 
railroads, that in the session of 1825, 438 
petitions for private Bills were presented, and 
286 private Acts were passed. . . . It is on 
record that a single share of a mine on which 
fyo had been paid, yielded 200 per cent, hav- 
ing risen speedily to a premium of £,iApo per 
share."* 

Periods of such inflation invariably and neces- 
sarily close in scenes of disaster. Gold becomes 
scarce ; engagements that have been recklessly 
entered into cannot be met; goods have been 
produced in response to a speculative instead of 
a legitimate demand, and therefore will not sell ; 
the locked-up capital cannot be released, nor 
can it be temporarily supplied, except upon ruin- 
ous terms. Panic commences ; it spreads over 
the business world like fire over the dry prairies. 
The badly-managed banks and the most specu- 
lative business houses begin to totter ; the 
weakest of them fall, and the crash brings 
down others like a house of cards ; and in the 
depreciation of goods and the disappearance of 
capital, the prudent, sagacious and honorable 
merchant suffers for the folly, the recklessness, 
the avarice and the dishonesty of others. 

* Harriet Martineau's History of the Peace, book ii, p. 8. 



64 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

Such a crash came, from such causes, in the 
early winter of 1825. Harriet Martineau's 
father was one of those injured by the panic, 
without having been a party to the errors which 
produced it. He had resisted the speculative 
mania, and allowed it to sweep by him to its 
flood. It was, therefore, by no fault of his 
own that he was caught by the ebbing wave, 
and carried backwards, to be stranded in the 
shallows. His house did not fail ; but the 
struggle was a cruel one for many months. 
How severe the crisis was may be judged from 
the fact that between sixty and seventy banks 
stopped payment within six weeks. 

The strain of this business anxiety told 
heavily upon the already delicate health of Mr. 
Thomas Martineau. In the early spring of 
1826 it became clear that his days were num- 
bered. Up to the commencement of that 
troubled winter it had been supposed that his 
daughters would be amply provided for in the 
event of his death. But so much had been 
lost in the crisis, that he found himself, in his 
last weeks, compelled to alter his will, and was 
only able to leave to his wife and daughters a 
bare maintenance. He lingered on till June, 
and in that month he died. 

It was while Mr. Martineau lay ill, that Har- 
riet's second book, Addi^esses, Prayers, and 



EARLIEST WRITINGS. 6$ 

Hymns, passed through the press, and the dying 
father took great interest and found great com- 
fort in his child's work. Much of it lie must 
have read with feelings rendered solemn by his 
situation. 

This little volume so closely resembles the 
Devotional Exercises, that it is unnecessary to 
refer to it at greater length. The hymns, 
which are the special feature of this volume, 
do not call for much notice. They are not 
quite commonplace ; but verse was not Har- 
riet's natural medium of expression : she wrote 
a considerable quantity of it in her early days, 
as most young authors do ; but she soon came 
to see for herself that her gift of expression in 
its most elevated form was rather that which 
makes the orator than the poet. 

The comparative poverty to which the family 
were reduced on Mr. Martineau's death at once 
freed Harriet, to a considerable extent, from 
the obstacles which had previously been inter- 
posed to her spending time in writing. It was 
still far from being recognized that literature 
was to be her profession ; but it was obvious 
that if her pen could bring any small additions 
to her income they would be very serviceable. 
A friend gave her an introduction to Mr. Houl- 
ston, then publishing at Wellington, Shrop- 
shire ; and a few little tales, which she had 
3 



66 HARRIET MARTINEAU, 

lying by, were offered to him. He accepted 
them, issued them in tiny volumes, and paid 
her five guineas for the copyright of each story. 
This, then, was the beginning of Harriet Mar^ 
tineau's professional authorship. 



CHAPTER IV. 

GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS. 

The loss of pecuniary position did something 
more for Harriet Martineau besides opening the 
way to work in literature. The knowledge that 
she was now poor gave her lover courage to 
declare himself, and to seek her for his wife. 
Poverty, therefore, brought her that experience 
which is so much in a woman's mental history, 
however little it, perhaps, goes for in a man's. 
A love in youth, fervent, powerful, and pure ; 
a love, h^ppy and successful in the essential 
point that it is reciprocated by its object, how- 
ever fate may deny it outward fruition ; such a 
love once filling a woman's soul, sweetens it and 
preserves it for her whole life through. Pity the 
shriveled and decayed old hearts which were not 
thus embalmed in youth ! Harriet Martineau 
did have this precious experience ; and her 
womanliness of nature remained fresh and true 
and sweet to the end of her days because of it. 
There may be many married women old maids 
in heart — to be so is the punishment of those 



6S HARRIET MARTINEAU, 

who marry without love ; and there are many, 
like Harriet Martineau, who are single in life, 
but whose hearts have been mated, and so made 
alive. I do not know that she would have gained 
by marriage, in any way, except in the chance of 
motherhood, a yet greater fact than love itself 
to a woman. On the other hand, her work must 
have been hindered by the duties of married 
life, even if her marriage had been thoroughly 
happy, and her lot free from exceptional 
material cares. Matronage is a profession in 
itself. The duties of a wife and mother, as 
domestic life is at present arranged, absorb 
much time and strength, and so diminish the 
possibilities of intellectual labor. Moreover, 
the laws regulating marriage are still, and fifty 
years ago were far more, in a very bad state ; 
and, leaving a woman wholly dependent for 
fair treatment, whether as a wife or mother, 
upon the mercy and goodness of the man she 
marries, justify Harriet Martineau's observa- 
tion : ** The older I have grown, the more serious 
have seemed to me the evils and disadvantages 
of married life, as it exists among us at this 
time." The wife who is beloved and treated as 
an equal partner in life, the mother whose natural 
rights in the guardianship of her family are 
respected, the mistress of a home in which she 
is the sunshine of husband and children, must 



GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS. 69 

ever be the happiest of women. But far better 
is it to be as Harriet Martineau was — a widow 
of the heart by death — than to have the affec- 
tions torn through long years by neglect and 
cruelty, springing less from natural badness 
than from the evil teaching of vile laws and 
customs. Fifty years ago marriage was a 
dangerous step for a woman ; and Harriet Mar- 
tineau had reason for saying at last : ''Thus, I 
am not only entirely satisfied with my lot, but 
think it the very best for me." 

For a while, however, the happy prospect of 
a beloved wifehood cheered her struggling and 
anxious life. But it was not for long. Her 
actual and acknowledged engagement lasted, 
I believe, only a few months. Mr. Worthington 
had, at this time, but lately completed his course 
as a Divinity student ; and he had been appoint- 
ed to the joint charge of a very large Unitarian 
Church at Manchester. Conscientiousness was 
one of the most marked features of his character, 
according to his college friend ; and Harriet 
herself declares that she "venerated his moral 
nature." He had thrown himself into the very 
heavy pastoral work committed to him with all 
the devotion of this high characteristic. More- 
over, the long doubt and suspense of his love 
for her before their engagement, had, doubtless, 
worked unfavorably upon his nervous system. 



70 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

The end of it was, that he was suddenly seized 
with a brain fever, in which he became dehrious. 
He was removed to his father's home in Leices- 
tershire, to be nursed ; and in process of time, 
the fever was subdued. But the mind did not 
regain its balance. He was still, as she says, 
"insane" ; but from one of her dear and early 
friends, I hear that '' his family did not call it 
insanity," — only a feeble and unhinged state, 
from which recovery might have been expected 
hopefully. 

In this state of things it was thought desirable 
that the woman he loved should be brought to 
see him. The beloved presence, his physician 
believed, might revive old impressions and happy 
anticipations, and might be the one thing need- 
ful to induce a favorable change in his condition. 
His mother wrote to beg Harriet Martineau to 
come to him; Harriet eagerly sought her 
mother's permission to hasten to his side ; and 
Mrs. Martineau forbade her daughter to go. 
The old habit of obedience to her mother, and 
the early implanted ideas of filial duty, were 
too strong for Harriet at once to break through 
them ; she did not defy her mother and go ; 
and in a few more weeks — terrible weeks of 
doubt and mental storm they must have been, 
between her love and her obedience dragging 
her different ways — Worthington died, and 



GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS. /I 

left' her to her life of heart-widowhood, 
darkened by this shadow of arbitrary separa- 
ration to the last. '' The calamity was aggra- 
vated to me," she says, ''by the unaccountable 
insults I received from his family, whom I had 
never seen. Years after, the mystery was 
explained. They had been given to understand, 
by cautious insinuation, that 1 was actually 
engaged to another while receiving my friend's 
addresses." They had not appreciated how 
submissive she was as a daughter ; and their 
belief that her love was insincere was not an 
unnatural one in the circumstances. 

Had those relatives of the dead lover lived to 
read Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, they 
would not have been made to think differently 
of her feelings towards him ; for there she goes 
calmly on, after the passage above quoted, to 
say only: "Considering what I was in those 
days, it was happiest for us both that our union 
was prevented." As we have had to look out- 
side the Autobiography for a record of what 
love was to her, and what it did for her, so we 
must seek elsewhere for the cry of agony which 
tells how she felt her loss. But the record 
exists ; it is found in an essay entitled In a 
Death Chamber, one of that autobiographical 
series published in The Monthly Repository, 
from which I have previously quoted. 



72 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

This beautiful piece of writing — far more of 
a poem in essence than anything which she ever 
pubhshed in verse — is spoiled as a composi- 
tion by mutilation in quoting. But its length 
leaves me no option but to select from it only a 
few of the more confessional passages, to aid us 
in our psychological study : 

This weary watch ! In watching by the couch 
of another there is no weariness ; but this lonely 
tending of one's own sick heart is more than 
the worn-out spirit can bear. What an age of 
woe since the midnight clock gave warning that 
my first day of loneliness was beginning — to 
others a Sabbath, to me a day of expiation. 

All is dull, cold and dreary before me, until I 
also can escape to the region where there is no 
bereavement, no blasting root and branch, no 
rending of the heart-strings. What is aught to 
me, in the midst of this all-pervading, thrilling 
torture, when all I want is to be dead } The 
future is loathsome, and I will not look upon it ; 
the past, too, which it breaks my heart to think 
about — what has it been .-* It might have been 
happy, if there is such a thing as happiness ; but 
I myself embittered it at the time, and for ever. 
What a folly has mine been ! Multitudes of 
sins now rise up in the shape of besetting griefs. 
Looks of rebuke from those now in the grave ; 
thoughts which they would have rebuked if they 
had known them ; moments of anger, of cold- 
ness ; sympathy withheld when looked for ; 
repression of its signs through selfish pride ; 



i 



GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS. 73 

and worse, far worse even than this ... all 
comes over me now. O ! if there be pity, if 
there be pardon, let it come in the form of insen- 
sibility ; for these long echoes of condemnation 
will make me desperate. 

But was there ever human love unwithered 
by crime — by crime of which no human law 
tgikes cognizance, but the unwrilten everlasting 
laws of the affections t Many will call me thus 
innocent. The departed breathed out thanks 
and blessing, and I felt them not then as 
reproaches. If, indeed, I am only as others, 
shame, shame on the impurity of human affec- 
tions ; or, rather, alas ! for the infirmity of the 
human'lieart ! For I know not that I could love 
more than I have loved. 

Since the love itself is wrecked, let me gather 
up its relics, and guard them more tenderly, 
more steadily, more gratefully. This seems to 
open up glimpses of peace. O grant me power 
to retain them — the light and music of emotion, 
the flow of domestic wisdom and chastened 
mirth, the life-long watchfulness of benevolence, 
the thousand thoughts — are these gone in their 
reality t Must I forget them as others forget .? 

If I were to see my departed one — that insen- 
sible, wasted form — standing before me as it 
was wont to stand, with whom would I exchange 
my joy .? . _. . But it is not possible to lose all. 
The shadows of the past may have as great 
power as their substance ever had, and the spirit 
of human love may ever be nigh, invested with 
a majesty worthy to succeed the lustre of its 
mortal days. 



74 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

This is the poem of Harriet Martineau's love. 
This is what remains to show that the girl whose 
intellect was so powerful, and who had habitually 
and of choice exercised her mind upon the most 
abstruse studies and the most difficult thoughts 
which can engage the attention, could neverthe- 
less feel at least as fervently, and deliver her- 
self up to her emotions at least as fully, as any 
feeble, ignorant, or narrow-minded creature that 
ever lived. Surely, with the truth emphasized 
by such an example, the common but stupid 
delusion that the development of the intellect 
diminishes the capacity for passion and tender- 
ness, must fade away ! This girl's mental power 
and her mental culture were both unusually 
large ; but here is the core of her heart, and is 
it not verily womanly } 

This experience did more than give her hours 
of happiness ; it did more than bring to her that 
enlargement of the spirit which she so well 
described ; for it taught her to appreciate, and 
to properly value, the influence of the emotions 
in life. Never in one of her works, never in a 
single phrase, is she found guilty of that blas- 
phemy against the individual affections, into 
which some who have yet sought to pose as high 
priests of the religion of humanity have fallen 
and lost themselves. In all her writings one 
finds the continual recognition of the great truth 



GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS. 75 

which was in the mind of him who said : "If a 
man love not his brother whom he hath seen, 
how shall he love God whom he hath not seen ?" 
— a truth of the very first consequence to those 
who aim at expressing their religion by service 
to the progress of mankind. 

The year 1826, to Harriet crowded so full of 
trouble, came to an end soon after Mr. Worth- 
ington's death. In the following year, though 
she was in very bad health, she wrote a vast 
quantity of manuscript. Some of it was pub- 
lished at once. Other portions waited in her 
desk for a couple of years, when her contribu- 
tions to The Monthly Repository recommenced, 
after a change in its editorship. 

She wrote in the year 1827 various short sto- 
ries, which were published by Houlston, of 
Shrewsbury, without her name on their title- 
pages. Their character may be guessed by the 
fact that they were circulated as Mrs. Sher- 
wood's writings ! In tone, they resemble the 
ordinary Sunday-school story-book ; but there 
is a fire, an earnestness, and an originality 
often discov^erable in them which are enough 
to mark them out from common hack-writing. 
Two of them, The Rioters and The Timi Out, 
deal with topics of political economy ; but the 
questions were thought out (very accurately) in 
her own mind, for at that time she had never 
read a book upon the subject. 



J^ HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

These little stories were so successful that 
the publisher invited her to write a longer one, 
which should have her name attached to it. 
She went to work, accordingly, and produced a 
good little tale, of one hundred and fifty pages 
of print, which she called Principle and Prac- 
tice. It recounts the struggles of an orphan 
family in their efforts after independence. As 
in all her writings of this kind, her own expe- 
rience is interfused into the fiction. No part 
of this story is "so interesting as that where a 
young man who has met with an accident has 
to reconcile his mind to the anticipation of life- 
long lameness — as she to deafness. The sis- 
ters of this orphan family, too, make money by 
a kind of fancy-work by which she herself was 
earning a few guineas from the wealthier mem- 
bers of her family, namely, by cutting bags and 
baskets out of pasteboard, fitting them together 
with silk and gold braid, and painting plaques 
upon their sides. Principle and Practice was 
so warmly received in the circle to which it 
was suited that the publisher called for a sequel, 
which was accordingly written early in the fol- 
lowing year. 

There was a vast quantity of writing in all 
these publications ; and, besides this, she was 
continually at work with her needle. Such 
unremitting sedentary occupation, together 



GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS. 77 

with her sorrow, caused a serious illness, from 
which she suffered during 1828. It was an 
affection of the liver and stomach, for which 
she went to be treated by her brother-in-law, 
Mr. Greenhow, *a surgeon at Newcastle-on- 
Tyne. 

Her remarkable powers of steady application, 
and her untiring industry, were always* amongst 
her most noteworthy characteristics — as, in- 
deed, is proved by the vast quantity of work 
she achieved. In each of her various illnesses, 
friends who had watched with wonder and 
alarm how much she wrote, and how unceas- 
ingly she worked, either with pen, or book, or 
needle in hand, told her that her suffering was 
caused by her merciless industry. Her ''stay- 
ing power " was great ; she rarely felt utterly 
exhausted, and therefore she was impatient of 
being told that she had, in fact, over-exerted 
her strength. Sometimes, indeed, she admitted 
that she worked too much, and pleaded only 
that she. could not help it — that the work 
needed doing, or that the thoughts pressed for 

* " I should think there never was such an industrious 
lady," said the maid who was with her for the last eleven 
years of her life; "when I caught sight of her, just once, 
leaning back in her chair, with her arms hanging down, and 
looking as though she wasn't even thinking about anything, 
it gave me quite a turn. I felt she must be ill to sit like 
that ! " 



7^ HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

utterance, and she could not refuse the call of 
duty. But more often she said, as in a letter 
to Mr. Atkinson, which lies before me, " My 
best aid and support in the miseries of my life 
has been in ivoi'k — in the intellectual labor 
which I believe has done me nothing but good." 
So her immense industry in 1827 may have 
seemed to her a relief from her heart-sorrows 
at the moment ; but none the less it probably 
was the chief cause of her partial breakdown 
in the next year. A blister relieves internal 
inflammation ; but a succession of such stimuli 
too long continued will exhaust the strength, 
and render the condition more critical than it 
would have been without such treatment. 

At Newcastle there was a brief cessation 
from work, under the doctor's orders. But in 
the middle of 1828 Harriet began to write again 
for the Repository, in response to an appeal put 
forth by the editor for gratutious literary aid. 
That editor was the well-known Unitarian 
preacher, William Johnston Fox, of South Place 
Chapel. Mr. Fox became Harriet Martineau's 
first literary friend. He had no money with 
which to reward her work for his magazine ; 
but he paid her amply in a course of frank, full, 
and generous private criticism and encourage- 
ment. " His correspondence with me," she 
says, "was unquestionably the occasion, and, in 



GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS. 79 

great measure, the cause, of the greatest intel- 
lectual progress I ever made before the age of 
thirty." Mr Fox was so acute a critic that he 
ere long predicted that *' she would be one of 
the first authors of the age if she continued to 
write ; " while, at the same time, he offered sug- 
gestions for improvement, and made corrections 
in her work upon occasion. Her advance in 
literary capacity was now very rapid. Her 
style went on improving, as it should do, till 
her latest years ; but it now first became an 
individual one, easy, flowing, forcible, and often 
most moving and eloquent. 

During the latter half of 1828 and the early 
part of the succeeding year, she contributed, 
more or less, to nearly every monthly number 
of the Repository, without receiving any pay- 
ment. She wrote essays, poems, and so-called 
reviews, which last, however, were really 
thoughtful and original papers, suggested by the 
subject of a new book. Some of these contri- 
butions were signed '' V " ; but others, including 
all the reviews, were anonymous. 

Most of these articles are on philosophical sub- 
jects, and are written with the calmness of st3de 
suitable to logical and argumentative essays. 
In the Repository for February, 1829, and the 
succeeding month, for instance, there appeared 
two papers, headed, '^ On the Agency of Feelings 



80 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

in the Formation of Habits," which are simply 
an accurate, clear, and forcibly-reasoned state- 
ment of the philosophical doctrine of Associa- 
tion, with which that of Necessity is inseparably 
connected. These were, it has been already 
observed, the theories by which she was learning 
both to guide her own action and to see that 
society is moulded, however unconsciously, as 
regards most of the individuals composing it. 
A clearer statement of the doctrines, or a more 
forcible indication of how they can be made to 
serve as a moral impulse, cannot be imagined. 
Here is very different work from Devotional 
Exercises, or Principle and Practice. But it 
brought its author neither fame nor money. 

Another piece of work done in 1828, or early 
in the following year, was a Life of Howard, 
which was written on a positive commission 
from a member of the Committee of Lord 
Brougham's '' Society for the Diffusion of Use- 
ful Knowledge," who promised her thirty 
pounds for it. The MS. was at first said to be 
lost at the office ; eventually she found that its 
contents were liberally cribbed by the writer 
of the Life which was published ; but she 
never received a penny of the. promised pay- 
ment. These were her times of stress, and 
struggle, and suffering, and disappointment, in 
literature as in ordinary life. Her great success, 



GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS. 8 1 

when at last it did come, was so sudden that her 
previous work was obscured and pushed out ot 
sight in the blaze of triumph. But these years 
of labor, unrecognized and almost unrewarded, 
must not be left out of our view, if we would 
judge fairly of her character. Courage, resolu- 
tion, self-reliance, determination to conquer in 
a field once entered upon, are displayed by her 
quiet industrious perseverance through those 
laborious years. Harriet Martineau did not 
make a sudden and easy rush far up the ladder 
of fame all at once ; her climb, like that of 
most great men and women, was arduous and 
slow, and her final success proved not only that 
she had literary ability, but also the strength of 
character which could work on while waiting 
for recognition. 

Fresh trouble was yet impending. After 
Mr. Martineau's death, his son Henry remained 
a partner in the weaving business which the 
father had carried on so long ; and the incomes 
(small, but sufficient for a maintenance) of the 
widow and unmarried daughters had to be paid 
out of the profits of the factory. Just three 
years after Mr. Martineau's death, however, in 
June, 1829, the old house became bankrupt, with 
but small assets. Mrs. Martineau and her 
daughters were thus deprived suddenly of all 
means of support. 



82 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

The whole family met this final blow to their 
fortunes wdth calm courage. It was soon settled 
that the two girls who possessed all their senses 
should go out to teach ; but Harriet could not 
be set to work in the same way — for pupils 
could not easily be found who would say their 
lessons into an ear-trumpet. The husband of 
the lady brought up by Mrs. Martineau with her 
youngest daughter tells me that upon this 
occasion Harriet's mother said to her adopted 
child, " I have no fear for any of my daughters, 
except poor Harriet ; the others can work, but, 
with her deafness, I do not know how she can 
ever earn her own bread ! " 

The first resource for Harriet was fancy work 
of different kinds. " I could make shirts and 
puddings," she declares, "and iron, and mend, 
and get my bread by my needle, if necessary — 
as it was necessary, for a few months, before I 
won a better place and occupation with my pen." 
During the winter which followed the failure of 
the old Norwich house, she spent the entire 
daylight hours poring over fancy-work, by which 
alone she could with certainty earn money. 
But she did not lay aside the sterner implement 
of labor for that bright little bread-winner, the 
needle. After dark she began a Jong day's 
literary labor in her own room. 



GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS. 83 

Every night, I believe, I was writing till two, 
or even three, in the morning, obeying always 
the rule of the house of being present at the 
breakfast-table as the clock struck eight. Many 
a time I was in such a state of nervous exhaus- 
tion and distress that I was obliged to walk to 
and fro in the room before I could put on paper 
the last line of a page, or the last half-sentence 
of an essay or review. Yet was I very happy. 
The deep-felt sense of progress and expansion 
was delightful ; and so was the exertion of all my 
faculties ; and not least, that of Will to over- 
come my obstructions, and force my way to that 
power of public speech of which I believed 
myself more or less worthy. 

She offered the results of this nightly liter- 
ary toil to a great number of magazine editors 
and publishers, but without the slightest suc- 
cess. Totally unknown in London society, 
having no literary friends or connections beyond 
the editor of the obscure magazine of her sect, 
her manuscripts were scarcely looked at. 
Everything that she wrote was returned upon 
her hands, until she offered it in despair to the 
Monthly Repository, where she was as invari- 
ably successful. Her work, when published 
there, however, brought her not an atom of 
fame, and only the most trifling pecuniary 
return. She wrote to Mr. Fox, when she found 
herself penniless, to tell him that it would be 
impossible for her to continue to render as 



84 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

much gratuitous service as she had been doing 
to the Repository ; but he could only reply that 
the means at his disposal were very limited, 
and that the utmost he could offer her was 
£,\^ a year, for which she was to write ''as 
much as she thought proper." With this let- 
ter he forwarded her a parcel of nine books to 
review, as a commencement. A considerable 
portion of the space in his magazine was filled 
by Miss Martineau for the next two years on 
these terms. 

The essay previously referred to, on the 
''Agency of Feelings in the Formation of 
Habits," which appeared in the Repository for 
February and March, 1829, was Harriet Mar- 
tineau's first marked work. It was followed 
up by a series, commencing in the August of 
the same year, of " Essays on the Art of 
Thinking," which were continued in the mag- 
azine until December, when two chapters were 
given in the one number, in order, as the editor 
remarked, that his readers "might possess 
entire in one volume this valuable manual of 
the Art of Thought." 

"V," the writer of these articles, was sup- 
posed to be of the superior sex. In those days, 
Mr. Fox would have shown rare courage if he 
had informed his readers that they were " re- 
ceiving valuable instruction " in how to exer- 



GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS. 85 

cise their ratiocinative faculties from the pen 
of a woman. In the Index, I find the refer- 
ences run — *'V\'s " "Ode to Religious Lib- 
erty"; Jiis "Last Tree of the Forest"; Jiis 
"Essays on the Art of Thinking," etc., etc. 

The "Essays on the Art of Thinking" are 
nothing less than an outline of Logic. In sub- 
stance, they present no great originality ; but 
they display full internal evidence that the 
thoughts presented were the writer's own, and 
not merely copied from authority. It is really 
no light test of clearness and depth of thought 
to write on an abstruse science in lucid, per- 
spicuous fashion, giving a brief but complete 
view of all its parts in their true relations. 
Only an accurate thinker, with a mind both 
capacious and orderly, can perform such a task. 
The highest function of the human mind is, 
doubtless, that of the discoverer. The original 
thinker, he who observes his facts from nature 
at first hand, who compares them, and reasons 
about them, and combines them, and general- 
izes a principle from them, is the one whom 
posterity to all time must honor and reverence 
for his additions to the store of human knowl- 
edge. But not far inferior in power, and equal 
in immediate usefulness, is the disciple who 
can judge the originator's work, and, finding it 
perfectly in accordance with facts as known to 



S6 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

him, can receive it into his mind, arrange it in 
order, deck it with illustration, illuminate it 
with power of language, and represent it in a 
form suitable for general comprehension. 
There is originality of mind needed for such 
work ; that which is done, the adaptation of 
the truths to be received to the receptive 
powers of the multitude, is an original work 
performed upon the truths, hardly inferior in 
difificulty and utility to that of him who first 
discerns them. This was the class of work 
which Harriet Martineau was beginning to do, 
and to do well. But there was more than this 
in her purposes. 

As these articles, though vastly inferior in 
execution to what she afterwards did, neverthe- 
less show the essential characteristics of her 
work, this seems to be the most favorable 
opportunity to pause to inquire what was the 
special feature of her writings. For, various 
though her subjects appear to be, ranging from 
the humblest topics, such as the duties of 
maids-of-all-work, up to the highest themes of 
mental and jDolitical philosophy, yet I find one 
informing idea, one and the same moving 
impulse to the pen of the writer, throughout 
the whole series. Let us see what it was that 
she really, though half unconsciously perhaps, 
kept before her as her aim. 



GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS. ^J 

It is obvious at once that her writings are all 
designed to teach. A little closer consideration 
shows that what they seek to teach is always 
w/iat is rigJit conduct. Abstract truth merely 
as such does not content her. She seeks its 
practical concrete application to daily life. 
Further, not merely has she the aim of teach- 
ing morals, but she invariably makes facts and 
reasonings front facts tJie basis of her moral 
teachings. In other words, she approaches 
morals from the scientific instead of the intui- 
tional side ; and to thus influence conduct is 
the. invariable final object of her writings. 

It would sound simpler to say that she wrote 
on the science of morals. But the term "moral 
science" has already been appropriated to a 
class of writing than which nothing could, very 
often, less deserve the name of science. The 
work which Harriet Martineau spent her whole 
life in doing, was, however, true work in moral 
science. What she was ever seeking to do was 
to find out how men should live from what men 
and their surroundings are. She must be rec- 
ognized as one of the first thinkers to uniformly 
consider practical morals as derived from rea- 
soned science. 

Many of the articles contributed to the Repos- 
itory were naturally, from the character of the 
publication, upon theology. Much that is 



S8 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

noticeable might be culled from amongst them ; 
as, indeed, could be inferred from the fact that 
an able leader of her religious body allowed 
her to fill so very large a portion of the pages 
by which, under his guidance, the Unitarian 
public were instructed. In all the essays, a 
distinguishing feature is the earnestness of the 
effort put forth to judge the questions at issue 
by reason, and not by prejudice. It is true 
that the effort often fails. There comes the 
moment at which faith in dogma intervenes, 
and submerges the pure argument ; but none 
the less do the spirit of justice and fairness, 
and the love of truth, irradiate the whole of 
these compositions. 

Mr. Fox soon asked her if she thought that 
any of her ideas could be expressed through the 
medium of fiction. It so happened that the 
suggestion precisely fell in with a thought that 
had already occurred to her that *'of all delight- 
ful tasks, the most delightful would be to 
describe, with all possible fidelity, the aspect 
of the life and land of the Hebrews, at the 
critical period of the full expectation of the 
Messiah." She wrote a story which she called 
TJie Hope of the Hebrews, in which a company 
of young i^eople, relatives and friends, were 
shown as undergoing the alternations of doubt 
and hope about whether this teacher was indeed 



GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS. 89 

Messiah, on the first appearance of Jesus in 
Palestine. The day after this story appeared 
in the Repository Mr. Fox was at an anniver- 
sary dinner of the sect, where so many per- 
sons spoke to him about the tale, that he wrote 
and generously advised Harriet not to publish 
any more such stories in his magazine, biit to 
make a book of them. She adopted the sug- 
gestion ; the little volume was issued with her 
name, and proved her first decisive success. 
Not only was it well circulated and highly 
appreciated in England, but it was translated 
into French, under high ecclesiastical sanction, 
and was also immediately reproduced in the 
United States. 

While this book was in the press, she went 
to stay for a short time in London. Mr. Fox, 
hearing from her how anxious she was to earn 
her livelihood by literature, succeeded in obtain- 
ing from a printer friend of his an offer for her 
to do "proof correcting and other drudgery," 
if she liked to remain in Londcfn for the work. 
This would have given her a small but certain 
income, and there could be little doubt that, if 
she stayed in London, she would gradually get 
into some journalistic employment which would 
enable her to support herself tolerably well. 
There were no great hopes in the matter. Mr. 
Fox told her that "one hundred or one hundred 



go HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

and fifty pounds a year is as much as our most 
'successful writers usually make " — success here 
meaning, of course, full employment in hack- 
work. It had not yet occurred, even to Mr. 
Fox, that she was to be really a successful 
author. But to do even this drudgery, and to 
take the poor chance now offered to her, implied 
that she must make her home in London ; and 
she wrote to inform her mother of this fact. 

The same post which carried Harriet's letter 
to this effect, bore to Mrs. Martineau a second 
missive, from the relative with whom her 
daughter was staying, which strongly advised 
that Harriet should be recalled home, there to 
pursue the needle-work by which she had proved 
she could earn money. The good lady had been 
wont to ask Harriet day by day ''how much she 
would get " for the literary labor upon which 
she had expended some hours ; and the poor 
young author's reply not being satisfactory or 
precise, her hostess looked upon the time spent 
at the desk as so much wasted. She gave 
Harriet some pieces of silk, ''lilac, blue, and 
pink," and advised her to keep to making little 
bags and baskets, which the kind friend gener- 
ously promised to assist in disposing of for good 
coin of the realm. 

The mother who had stood between her full- 
grown daughter and the bed of a dying 



GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS. 9 1 

betrothed, now thought herself justified in 
interposing between the woman of twenty-seven 
and the work which she desired to undertake 
for her independence. Mrs. Martineau sent 
Harriet a stern letter, peremptorily ordering 
her to return home forthwith. Bitterly disap- 
pointed at seeing this chance of independence 
in the vocation she loved thus snatched away, 
Harriet's sense of filial duty led her to obey 
her mother's commands. She went home with 
a heavy heart ; and with equal sadness, her 
little sister of eighteen turned out of home, at 
the same despotic bidding, to go a-governessing. 
** My mother received me very tenderly. She 
had no other idea at the moment than that she 
had been doing her best for my good." 

Harriet did not return to Norwich entirely 
discouraged. Resolution such as hers was not 
easily broken down. The British and Foreign 
Unitarian Association had advertised three 
prizes for the best essays designed to convert 
Roman Catholics, Jews and Mohammedans 
respectively to Unitarianism. The sum offered 
for each was but small : ten guineas for the 
Catholic, fifteen for the Jewish, and twenty for 
the Mohammedan essays. But it was less the 
money than interest in the cause, and desire to 
see if she could succeed in competition with 
others^ that led Harriet to form the intention of 
trying for all three prizes. 



92 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

She went to work immediately upon the 
Catholic essay, which was to be adjudicated upon 
six months earlier than the other two. When it 
was finished, she paid a schoolboy, who wrote a 
good hand, a sovereign that she could ill spare, 
for copying the essay, which was about two- 
thirds the length of this volume. The essays 
were to be superscribed, as usual in such competi- 
tions, with a motto, and the writer's name and 
address had to be forwarded in a sealed envelope, 
with the same motto outside. In September, 
1830, she received the gratifying news that 
the committee of adjudication had unanimously 
awarded this prize to her. 

The other two essays were commenced with 
the spirit induced by this success. One of them 
was copied out by a poor woman, the other by a 
schoolmaster. Harriet was careful even to have 
the two essays written upon different sorts of 
paper, to do them up in differently shaped pack- 
ages, and to use separate kinds of wax and seals. 

The sequel may be told, with all the freshness 
of the moment, in a quotation from the MontJdy 
Repository for May, 1831 : *' We were about to 
review it \i. e. the Catholic essay] when the 
somewhat startling fact transpired of her having 
carried off the other premiums offered by the 
Association's committee for tracts addressed to 
the Mohammedans and the Jews We shall not 



GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS. 93 

now stop to inquire how it has happened that 
our ministers would not or could not prevent the 
honor of championing the cause of pure Chris- 
tianity against the whole theological world from 
developing upon a young lady. However that 
may be, she has won the honor and well deserves 
to wear it." 

The essays were published by the Unitarian 
Association. There can be little doubt that, 
however many ministers may have competed, 
the Committee did select the best papers offered 
to their choice. The learning in all is remarka- 
ble ; the freedom from sectarian bitterness, from 
bigotry, and from the insolent assumption of 
moral and religious superiority, is even more 
striking, in such proselytising compositions. 

While waiting the result of the prize compe- 
tition, Harriet wrote a long story for young 
people, which she called Five Years of YoutJi. 
It is one of the prettiest and most attractive of 
all her writings of this class. It has a moral 
object, of course — a somewhat similar one to 
that of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility; but 
the warning against allowing sensitiveness to 
pass into sentimentality is here directed to girls 
just budding into womanhood; and the punish- 
ment for the error is not a love disappointment, 
but the diminution of the power of domestic and 
social helpfulness. 



94 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

Harriet's work of this year, 1830, comprised 
the doing of much fancy-work for sale, making 
and mending everything that she herself wore, 
knitting stockings even while reading, studying 
a course of German' literature, and writing 
for the press the following quantity of literary 
matter : — Traditions of Palestine ^ a duodecimo 
volume of 170 printed pages; Five Years of 
Yonth, 264 small octavo pages ; three theo- 
logical essays, making a closely printed crown 
octavo volume of 300 pages ; and fifty-two 
articles of various lengths in the twelve numbers 
of the MontJdy Repository. 

And now she had touched the highest point 
of sectarian fame. The chosen expositor to the 
outer world of her form of religion, and the 
writer of its favorite Sunday School story-book 
of the hour, she must already have felt that her 
industrious, resolute labor through many years 
had at last borne some fruit. 

But the moment for wider fame and a greater 
usefulness was now at hand. In the autumn of 
1827 she had read Mrs. Marcet's Conversations 
on Political Economy^ and had become aware 
that the subject which she had thought out for 
herself, and treated in her little stories of The 
Rioters, and TJie Ttnii-Out, was a recognized 
science. She followed this up by a study of 
Adam Smith, and other economists, and the idea 



GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS, 95 

then occurred to her that it might be possible 
to illustrate the whole system of political econ- 
omy by tales similar in style to those she had 
already written. The thought had lain working 
in her mind for long, and, in this autumn of 
1 83 1, the idea began to press upon her as a 
duty. 

There were many reasons why it was espe- 
cially necessary just then that the people should 
be brought to think about Social Science. The 
times were bitter with the evils arising from 
unwise laws. None knew better than she did 
how largely the well-being of mankind depends 
upon causes which cannot be affected by kws. 
It is individual conduct which must make or mar 
the prosperity of the nation. But, on the other 
hand, laws are potent, both as direct causes of 
evil conditions (and in a less degree of good 
conditions), and from their educational influence 
upon the people. Harriet Martineau felt that 
she had come to see more clearly than the masses 
of her fellow-countrymen exactly how far the 
miseries under which English society groaned 
were caused directly or indirectly by mischiev- 
ious legislative acts. Moreover, the circum- 
stances of the moment made the imparting of 
such knowledge not only possible, but specially 
opportune. The Bishops had just thrown out 
the Reform Bill ; but no person who watched 



96 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

the temper of the time Could doubt that their 
feeble opposition would be speedily swept aside, 
and that self-government was about to be 
extended to a new class of the people. Most 
suitable was the occasion, then, for offering 
information to these upon the science and art 
of society. Harriet was right in her judgment 
when she started her project of a series of tales 
illustrative of Political Economy, under a 
"thorough, well-considered, steady conviction 
that the work was wanted, was even craved for 
by the popular mind. 

She began to write the first of her stories. 
The next business was to find a publisher to 
share her belief that the undertaking would be 
acceptable to the public. She wrote to one 
after another of the great London publishers, 
receiving instant refusal to undertake the series 
from ail but two ; and even these two, after giving 
her a little of that delusive hope which ends by 
plunging the mind into deeper despair, joined 
with their brethren in declining to have any- 
thing to do with the scheme. 

Finally, she went to London to try if per- 
sonal interviews would bring her any better 
success. She stayed in a house attached to a 
brewery (Whitbread's), belonging to a cousin 
of hers, and situated near the City Road. 
Thence, she tramped about through the mud 



I 



GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS. 9/ 

and sleet of December to the publishers' offices 
day after day for nearly three weeks. The 
result was always failure. But though she 
returned to the house worn-out and dispirited, 
her determination that the work should be 
done never wavered, and night after night she 
sat up till long after the brewery clock struck 
twelve, the pen pushing on in her trembling- 
hand, preparing the first two numbers of the 
series, to be ready for publication when the 
means should be found. 

It was the kind friend who had helped her 
before who came to the rescue at last at this 
crisis. Mr. W. J. Fox induced his brother 
Charles to make her proposals for publishing 
her series. 

Mr. Charles Fox took care to offer only such 
arrangement as should indemnify him from all 
risk in the undertaking. He required, first, 
that five hundred subscribers should be obtained 
for the work ; and second, that he, the pub- 
lisher, should receive about seventy-five per 
cent of the possible profits. Hopeless of any- 
thing better, she accepted these hard terms, 
and it was arranged that the first number 
should appear with February, 1832. 

The original stipulation as to the time that 
this agreement should run was that the engage- 
ment should be terminable by either party at 
4 



98 HAI^RIET MARTINEAU. 

the end of every five numbers. But a few 
days afterwards, when Harriet called upon Mr. 
W. J. Fox to show him her circular inviting 
subscribers for the series, she found that Mr. 
Charles Fox had decided to say that he would 
not publish more than two numbers, unless a 
thousand copies of No. i were sold in the first 
fortnight ! This decision had been arrived at 
chiefly in consequence of a conversation which 
W. J. Fox had held with James Mill, in which 
the distinguished political economist had pro- 
nounced against the essential point of the 
scheme — the narrative form — and had advised 
that, if the young lady must try her hand at 
Political Economy, she should write it in the 
orthodox didactic style. 

Mr. Fox lived at Dalston. When Harriet 
left his house, after receiving this unreasonable 
and discouraging ultimatum, she "set out to 
walk the four miles and a half to the Brewery. 
I could not afford to ride more or less ; but, 
weary already, I now felt almost too ill to walk 
at all. On the road, not far from Shoreditch, I 
became too giddy to stand without some support ; 
and I leaned over some dirty palings, pretend- 
ing to look at a cabbage-bed, but saying to my- 
self as I stood with closed eyes, 'My book 
will do yet.' " 

That very night she wrote the long, thought- 



GRIEF STRUGGLE AND PROGRESS. 99 

ful, and collected preface to her work. After 
she had finished it she sat over the fire in her 
bedroom, in the deepest depression ; she cried, 
with her feet on the fender, till four o'clock, 
and then she went to bed, and cried there till 
six, when she fell asleep. But if any persons 
suppose that because the feminine temperament 
finds a relief in tears, the fact argues weakness, 
they will be instructed by hearing that she 
was up by half-past eight, continuing her work 
as firmly resolved as ever that it should be 
published. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE GREAT SUCCESS. 

The work which had struggled into printed 
existence with such extreme difficulty raised its 
author at a bound to fame. Ten days after the 
publication of the first number, Charles Fox 
sent Harriet word that not only were the fif- 
teen hundred copies which formed the first edi- 
tion all sold off, but he had such orders in hand 
that he proposed to print another five thousand 
at once. The people had taken up the work 
instantly. The press followed, instead of lead- 
ing the public in this instance ; but it, too, was 
enthusiastic in praise, both of the scheme and 
the execution of the stories. 

More than one publisher who had previously 
rejected the series made overtures for it now. 
Its refusal, as they saw, had been one of those 
striking blunders of which literary history has 
not a few to tell. But there is no occasion to 
cry out about the stupidity of publishers. 
They can judge well how far a work written 
on lines already popular will meet the demand 



THE GREAT SlMCESS. 10 1 

of the market ; but an entirely original idea, or 
the work of an original writer, is a mere lottery. 
There is no telling how the public will take it 
until it has been tried. Publishers put into a 
good many such lotteries, and often lose by 
them ; then nothing more is heard of the mat- 
ter. But the cases where they decline a spec- 
ulation which afterwards turns out to have been 
a good one are never forgotten. Still, the fact 
remains that it was Harriet Martineau alone 
who saw that the people needed her work, and 
whose wonderful courage and resolution brought 
it out for the public to accept. 

Her success grew, as an avalanche gains in 
volume, by its own momentum. Besides the 
publishers' communications she had letters, 
and pamphlets, and blue-books, and magazines 
forwarded to her in piles, in order that she 
might include the advocacy of the senders' 
hobbies in her series. One day the postmaster 
sent her a message that she must let a barrow 
be fetched for her share of the mail, as it was 
too bulky to come in any other way. Lord 
Brougham "'declared that it made him tear his 
hair to think that the Society for the Diffusion 
of Knowledge, which he had instituted for the 
very purpose of doing such work as she was 
undertaking, seemed not to have a man in it 
with as much sense of what was wanted as this 



102 MARKET MARTINEAU, 

little deaf girl at Norwich. The public interest 
in the work was, perhaps, heightened by the 
fact that so ignorant was everybody of her per- 
sonality, that this description of Brougham's 
passed muster. But she was not little, and she 
was now twenty-nine years of age. 

She stayed in Norwich, going on writing 
hard, until the November of 1832, by which 
time eight numbers of her series .had appeared. 
Then she went to London, taking lodgings 
with an old servant of Mrs. Martineau's, who 
lived in Conduit street. In the course of a 
few months, however, Mrs. Martineau settled 
herself in London, and her daughter again 
resided with her, in a house in Fludyer street, 
Westminster. 

The purely literary success which she had 
•hitherto enjoyed was now turned into a 'social 
triumph. However she might strive against 
being lionized she could not avoid the attentions 
and honors that were poured upon her? It i^ 
little to say that all the distinguished people in 
town hastened to know her; it was even con- 
sidered to give distinction to a party if she 
could be secured to attend it. Literary celebri- 
ties, titled people, and members of Parliament, 
competed for the small space of time that she 
could spare for society. 

This was not very much, for the work she had 



THE GREAT SUCCESS. 103 

undertaken was heavy enough to absorb all her 
energies. She had engaged to produce one of 
her stories every month. They were issued in 
sm^U paper-covered volumes of from one hun- 
dred and twenty to one hundred and fifty pages 
of print. She began publication with only two 
or three numbers ready written. Thus, to keep 
on with her series, she had to write one whole 
number every month. It would have been hard 
work had it been simple story-telling, had she 
been merely imaginatively reproducing scenes 
and characters from her past experience, or 
writing according to her fancy. But it was, in 
fact, a much more difficult labor upon which she 
was engaged. Her scheme required that she 
should embody every shade of variety of the 
human character ; that her scenes should be laid 
in different parts of the world, with topography 
and surroundings appropriate to the story ; and 
that the governments and social state of all these 
\»arious places should be accurately represented. 
In addition to all this she had to lay down for 
each tale the propositions which had to be illus- 
trated in it ; to assure herself that she clearly 
saw the truth and the bearings of every doctrine 
of political economy ; and then to work into a 
connected fiction in a concrete form the abstract 
truths of the science — represehting them as 
exemplified in the lives of individuals. 



104 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

Political economy treats of the production, 
distribution and consumption, or use, of all the 
material objects of human desire, which are 
called by the general name of wealth. TliQus, it 
is a subject which concerns every one of us in 
our daily lives, and not merely a matter belong- 
ing (as its name unfortunately leads many to 
suppose) entirely to the province of the legisla- 
tor. The great mass of mankind are producers 
of wealth. All are necessarily consumers — 
for the bare maintenance of existence demands 
the consumption of wealth. The well-being of 
the community depends upon the industry and 
skill with which wealth is produced ; upon the 
distribution of it in such a manner as to encour- 
age future production ; and upon the consump- 
tion of it with due regard to the claims of the 
future. It is individuals who, as the business of 
common life, produce, exchange, divide and con- 
sume wealth ; it is, therefore, each individual's 
business to comprehend the science which treats 
of his daily life. A science is nothing but a 
collection of facts, considered in their relation- 
ship to each other. Miss Martineau's plan, in 
her series, was strictly what I have indicated 
as being always her aim ; namely, to deduce 
from an abstract science rules for daily life — 
the secondary, practical or concrete science. It 
was the union of a scientific basis with practical 



THE GREAT SUCCESS. ' 105 

morals that made this subject attractive to her 
mind, and led her (in the words of her preface,) 
to "propose to convey the leading truths of 
political economy, as soundly, as systematically, 
as clearly and faithfully, as the utmost painstak- 
ing and the strongest attachment to the subject 
will enable us to do." 

She did her work very methodically. Having 
first noted down her own ideas on the branch 
of the subject before her, she read over the 
chapters relating to it in the various standard 
works that she had at hand, making references 
as she read. The next thing to do was to draw 
out as clearly and concisely as possible the 
truths that she had to illustrate ; this " summary 
of principles," as she called it, was affixed to 
each tale. By this time she would see in what 
part of the world, and amongst what class of 
people, the principles in question were operat- 
ing most manifestly; and if this consideration 
dictated the choice of a foreign background, 
the next thing to be done was to get from a 
library works of travel and topography, and 
to glean hints from them for local coloring. 

The material thus all before her in sheets of 
notes, she reduced it to chapters ; sketching 
out the characters of her dramatis personce, 
their action, and the features of the scenes, 
and also the political economy which they had 



I06 HARRIET MARTINEAW. 

to convey either by exemplification or by 
conversation. Finally, she paged her paper. 
Then " the story went off like a letter. I did 
it," she says, "as I write letters; never alter- 
ing the expression as it came fresh from my 
brain." 

I have seen the original manuscript of one of 
the Political Economy Tales. It shows the 
statement just quoted to be entirely accurate. 
The writing has evidently been done as rapidly 
as the hand could move ; every word that will 
admit of it is contracted, to save time. '' Socy.," 
"opporty.," "agst," "abt.," ''independce.," 
these were amongst the abbreviations submitted 
to the printer's intelligence ; not to mention 
commoner and more simple words, such as wh., 
wd., and the like. The calligraphy, though 
very readable, has a somewhat slipshod look. 
Thus, there is every token of extremely rapid 
composition. Yet the corrections on the MS. 
are few and trifling ; the structure of a sentence 
is never altered, and there are but seldom 
emendations even of principal words. The 
manuscript is written (in defiance of law and 
order) on both sides of the paper ; the latter 
being quarto, of the size now commonly called 
sermon paper, but, in those pre-envelope ages, 
it was letter paper. 

Her course of life in London was as follows: 



THE GREAT SUCCESS. 10/ 

she wrote in the morning, rising, and making 
her own coffee at seven, and going to work 
immediately after breakfast until two. From 
two till four she saw visitors. Having an im- 
mense acquaintance, she declined undertaking 
to make morning calls ; but people might call 
upon her any afternoon. She was charged with 
vanity about this arrangement ; but, with the 
work on her hands and the competition for her 
company, she really could not do differently. 
Still, Sydney Smith suggested a better plan; 
he told her she should ''hire a carriage, and 
engage an inferior authoress to go round in it 
to drop the cards!" After any visitors left, 
she went out for her daily "duty walk," and 
returned to glance over the newspapers, and to 
dress for dinner. Almost invariably she dined 
out, her host's or some other friend's carriage 
being commonly sent to fetch her. One or two 
evening parties would conclude the day, unless 
the literary pressure was extreme, in which case 
she would sometimes write letters after return- 
ing home. During the whole time of writing 
her series, she was satisfied with from five to 
six hours' sleep out of the twenty-four ; and 
though she was not a teetotaller, but drank 
wine at dinner, still she took no sort of 
stimulant to help her in her work. 

This was the course of life that a woman, of 



I08 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

no extraordinary physical strength, was able to 
maintain with but little cessation or interval for 
two years. When I look at the thirty-four lit- 
tle volumes which she produced in less than as 
many months, and when I consider the character 
of their contents, I am bound to say that I con- 
sider the feat of mere industry unparalleled, 
within my knowledge. 

The Ilhistrations of Political Economy are 
plainly and inevitably damaged, as works of 
art, by the fact that they are written to convey 
definite lessons. The fetters in which the story 
moves are necessarily far closer than in the or- 
dinary ** novel with a purpose;" for here the 
object is not •merely to show the results, upon 
particular characters or upon individual careers, 
of a certain course of conduct, and thence to 
argue that in similar special circumstances all 
persons would experience similar consequences : 
but the task here is to show in operation those 
springs of the social machinery by which we 
are all, generally quite unconsciously, guided in 
our evcry-day actions, the natural laws by which 
alloMX lives are inevitably governed. To do this, 
the author was compelled to select scenes from 
common life, and to eschew the striking and the 
unusual. Again, it was absolutely necessary 
that much of the doctrine which had to be 
taught must be conveyed by dialogue; not 



THE GREAT SUCCESS. 109 

because it would not be possible to exemplify in 
action every theory of political economy — for all 
those theories have originally been derived from 
observation of the facts of human history — but 
because no such a small group of persons and 
such a limited space of time as must betaken to 
tell a sto}y aboict, can possibly display the whole 
consequences of many of the laws of social 
science. The results of our daily actions as 
members of society are not so easily visible as 
they would be if we could wholly trace them out 
amongst our own acquaintances or in our own 
careers. The consequences of our own conduct, 
good or bad, must come rotmd to us, it is true, but 
often only as members of the body politic. Thus, 
they are very often in a form as little distin- 
guishable to the uninstructed mind as we may 
suppose it would be comprehensible to the brain, 
if the organs of the body had a separate con- 
sciousness, that it was responsible for its own 
aches arising from the disturbance of the liver 
consequent upon intemperance. But in a tale it 
is obviously impossible to show i?i action any 
more of the working of events than can be ex- 
emplified in one or two groups of persons, all 
of whom must be, however slightly, personally 
associated. The larger questions and principles 
at issue must be expounded and argued out in 
conversations, or else by means of an entire lapse 



no HA RRIE T MA R TINEA U. 

from the illustrative to the didactic method. 
Now, as ordinary people do not go about the 
world holding long conversations or delivering 
themselves of dissertations on political economy, 
it is clear that the introduction of such talks 
and preachments detracts from the excellence of 
the story as a work of art. Still less artistic- 
ally admirable does the fiction become when a 
lesson is introduced as a separate argument 
intruded into the course of the tale. 
^ Political economy as a science was then but 
fifty years old. Adam Smith had first promul- 
gated its fundamental truths in his immortal 
Wealth of Nations, in 1776. Malthus, Ricardo, 
and one or two others had since added to the 
exposition of the facts and the relationship 
between the facts (that is to say, the science) 
of social arrangements. But it was not then — 
nor is it, indeed, yet, in an age when the great 
rewards of physical research have attracted 
into that field nearly all the best intellects for 
science of the time — a complete body of 
reasoned truths. Some of the positions laid 
down by all the earlier writers are now dis- 
credited ; others are questioned. In a few pas- 
sages, accordingly, these tales teach theories 
which would now require revision. It must be 
added at once that these instances are few and 
far between. The reasoning, the grasp of the 



THE GREA T SUCCESS. 1 1 1 

facts of social life and the logical acumen with 
which they are dissected and explained in these 
tales are, generally speaking, nearly perfect, 
and therefore such as all competent students of 
the subject would at this day indorse. The 
slips in exposition of the science as it was then 
understood are exceedingly rare. Greater clear- 
ness, and more precision, and better arrange- 
ment could hardly have been attained had years 
been spent upon the work, in revising, correct- 
ing, and re-copying, instead of each " Illustra- 
tion " being written in a month, and sent to 
press with hardly a phrase amended. 

The accuracy and excellence in the presenta- 
tion of the science were admitted at once by 
the highest authorities. Mr. James Mill early 
made honorable amends for his previous doubts 
as to the possibility of Miss Martineau's suc- 
cess. Whately and Malthus expressed their 
admiration of the work. Lord Brougham 
called upon her, and engaged her pen to illus- 
trate the necessity for reform in the treatment 
of the social canker of pauperism. The Gur- 
neys, and the rest of the Quaker members of 
Parliament got Mrs. Fry to make an appoint- 
ment to ask Miss Martineau's advice as to their 
action in the House on the same subject, when 
it was ripe for legislation. The Chancellor of 
the Exchequer (Lord Althorp) even sent his 



112 HA RRIE T MA R TINEA U. 

private secretary (Mr. Drummond, the author 
of the world-famous phrase *' Property has its 
duties as well as its rights ") to supply Miss 
Martineau with information to enable her to 
prepare the public for the forthcoming Budget. 
The chairman of the Royal Commission on 
Excise Taxes gave her the manuscript of the 
evidence taken, and the draft of the report of 
the Commission, before they were formally 
presented to the Ministers of the Crown (a 
thing without precedent ! ), in order that she 
might use the facts to pave the way for the 
reception of the report in the House and by 
the people. The whole public of male stu- 
dents of her science paid her work what men 
consider in their unconscious insolence to be 
the highest compliment that they can pay a 
woman's work : the milder-mannered ones said 
she had ''a masculine intelligence"; the 
stronger characters went further, and declared 
that the books were so good that it was impos- 
I sible to believe them to be written by a woman. 
Newspaper critics not infrequently attributed 
them to Lord Brougham, then Lord Chancel- 
lor ; that versatile and (at the moment) most 
popular politician was supposed either to write 
them all himself, or to supply their main 
features for the inferior mind to throw into 
shape. 



THE GREAT SUCCESS. II3 

While statesnien, politicians, thinkers, and 
students were thus praising the clearness and 
appreciating the power of the work as political 
economy, the general public eagerly bought 
and read the books, both for their bearing on 
the legislative questions of the day and for 
their vividness and interest as stories. And 
indeed, they richly deserved to be read as 
works of fiction. Remembering the limita- 
tions to their artistic excellence previously 
adverted to, they may be with justice praised 
for most of the essential features of good 
novel-writing. 

The characters are the strongest point. 
Clearly individualized, consistently carried out, 
thinking, speaking, and acting in accordance 
with their nature, the characters are always 
personages ; and some of them must live long 
in the memories of thosQ who have made their 
acquaintance. The sterner virtues in Cousin 

Marshall, in Lady F , in Ella of Garveloch, 

and in Mary Kay, are no less clearly and attrac- 
tively depicted than the milder and more pass- 
ive ones in the patience of Christian Vanderput, 
in the unconscious devotion to duty of Nicholas, 
in the industry and hopefulness of Frank and 
Ellen Castle, in the wifely love and agony of 
Hester Morrison, in the quiet public spirit of 
Charles Guyon, in the proved patriotism of the 



114 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

Polish exiles, and in a dozen other instances. 
Her feelings and her spirit are at home in 
depicting these virtues of the character ; but 
none the less does she well succeed in realizing 
both vice and folly. Her real insight into char- 
acter was quite remarkable ; as Dr. Martineau 
observed to me, when he said, *'My sister's 
powers of observation were extraordinary." If, 
on the one hand, her deafness often prevented 
her from appreciating the delicacies and the 
chances of verbal expression (which really re- 
veal so much of the nature) in those around 
her, so that she was apt to draw sharper lines 
than most people do between the sheep and the 
goats in her estimation ; on the other hand, she 
saw more than those whose minds are distracted 
by sounds, the light and play of the countenance, 
and the indications of character in trivial actions. 
The excellence of her character-drawing in these 
novels gives abundant evidence that the dis- 
qualification was more than counterbalanced by 
the cultivation of the other faculty. 

The unconsciousness of her mental analysis 
is at once its greatest charm and the best token 
of its truthfulness. Florence Nightingale real- 
ized how fully this was so with reference to 
the finer qualities of morals. In her tribute to 
Harriet Martineau's memory Miss Nightingale 
justly observes : — 



THE GREAT SUCCESS. II5 

In many parts of her Ilhistrations of Political 
Economy — for example, the death of a poor 
clrinking-woman, ''Mrs Kay," — what higher 
reUgious feehng (or one should 7'ather say in- 
stinct) could there be ? To the last she had 
religious feeling — in the sense of good working 
out of evil into a supreme wisdom penetrating 
and moulding the whole universe ; into the 
natural subordination of intellect and intellect- 
ual purposes and of intellectual self to purposes 
of good, even were these merely the small pur- 
poses of social or domestic life. 

On the other side of the human character in 
her delineation of the bad qualities, she as in- 
stinctively seeks and finds causes for the errors 
and evils of the minds she displays. Foolish- 
ness, and ignorance, and poverty are traced^ 
entirely without affectation and '' cant," in their 
action as misleading influences in the lives of 
the poor sinners and sufferers. 

The stories told in the Ilhistrations are fre- 
quently very interesting. In this respect, there 
is a notable advance in the course of the series. 
The earlier tales, such as Life in the Wilds and 
Brooke Farm, are not to be compared, as mere 
stories, with even those written later on by only 
eight or nine stirring eventful months, such as 
Ireland and TJie Loom and the Lngger, Still 
better are the latest tales. The ' Ilhistrations 
of Taxation and Illustrations of Poor-Lazvs and 



1 1 6 HA RRIE T MA R TINEA U, 

Panpei's are, despite the unattractiveness of 
their topics, of the highest interest. The Paris h^ 
The Town, The Jcrseymen Meeting, TJie Jersey- 
men Parting, and The ScJiolars of Arnside, would 
assuredly be eagerly read by any lover of fiction 
almost without consciousness that there was 
anything in the pages except a deeply interest- 
ing story. 

Archbishop Whately pronounced The Parish 
the best thing she had done. Vanderpnt and 
Snook, the story dealing with bills of exchange, 
was the favorite with Mr. Hallam. Lord Broug- 
ham, on whose engagement she did the five 
" Poor-Law " stories, wrote most enthusiastically 
that they surpassed all the expections that her 
previous works had led him to form. Coleridge 
told her that he '* looked eagerly every month " 
for the new number ; and Lord Durham re- 
counted to her how one evening he was at 
Kensington Palace (where the widowed Duch- 
ess of Kent was then residing, and devoting 
herself to that education which has made her 
daughter the best sovereign of her dynasty), 
when the little Princess Victoria came running 
from an inner room to show her mother, with 
delight, the advertisement of the ''Taxation" 
tales ; for the young Princess was being allowed 
to read the Illustrations, and found them her 
most fascinating story-books. 



THE GREAT SUCCESS. II7 

Harriet's experiences, however, were not all 
quite so agreeable. Mrs. Marcet, who "had a 
great opinion of great people — of people great 
by any distinction, ability, office, birth, and what 
not — and innocently supposed her own taste to 
be universal," formed a warm and generous 
friendship for Miss Martineau, and used to de- 
light in carrying to her the "homages" of the 
savants and the aristocratic readers of the 
Illustrations in France, where Mrs. Marcet's 
acquaintance was extensive. She one day told 
Miss Martineau, with much delight, that Louis 
Philippe, the then King of the French, had 
ordered a copy of the series for each member of 
his family, and had also requested M. Guizot to 
have the stories translated, and introduced into 
the French national schools. This was pres- 
ently confirmed by a large order from France 
for copies, and by a note from the officially- 
appointed translator requesting Harriet Mar- 
tineau to favor him with some particulars of 
her personal history, for introduction into a 
periodical which was being issued by the Gov- 
ernment for the promotion of education amongst 
the French people. The writer added that M. 
Guizot wished to have Miss Martineau's series 
specially noticed in connection with her own 
personality, since she afforded the first instance 
on record of a woman who was not born to 



1 1 8 HA ERIE T MA R TINEA U. 

sovereign station affecting practical legislation 
otherwise than through a man. 

At the very time that she received this flat- 
tering note, Plarriet was engaged in writing her 
twelfth number, French Wines and Politics. 
The topic treated in this story is that of value, 
with the subsidiary questions relating to prices 
and their fluctuations. The tale takes up the 
period of the great French Revolution, and shows 
how the fortunes of certain wine-merchants near 
Bordeaux, and of the head of the Paris house in 
connection, were affected by the course of that 
great social convulsion. The scene was unques- 
tionably happily chosen. The circumstances 
were abnormal, it is true ; but the causes which 
created such vast fluctuations in prices, and such 
changes in the value of goods, were, in fact, 
only the same fundamental causes as are always 
at the basis of such alterations in price and 
value ; it was merely the rapidity and violence 
of the movement w^hich were peculiar. The 
story was well put together ; and the " Illus- 
tration" was in every way admirable for every 
possible desirable object, except only for the 
one of being pleasant to the ruling powers in 
the France of 1833. 

Harriet Martineau's constant sympathy with 
democracy, her hatred of oppression and tyranny, 
and her aversion to class government, all became 



THE GREAT SUCCESS. II9 

conspicuous in this story. '' The greatest happi- 
ness of the greatest number" of mankind was 
her ideal of the aim of legislation ; and she well 
knew, as Bentham saw, that only the democratic 
form of government can produce a body of laws * 
approximating to this ideal. Her efforts were 
constant, therefore, to prepare the people to 
demand, and to afterwards wisely use, the power 
of governing themselves. Now, though Louis 
Philippe was the citizen-king, though he was the 
head of a republican monarchy, though his leg- 
islative chamber rejected in that same year a 
ministerial document because it spoke of the 
people as "subjects," yet it may be easily 
understood that this king and his ministers did 
not care to stimulate the democratic feeling of 
the nation any more than they found inevitable. 
The whole tone of this work would be objection- 
able to them ; and a dozen passages might be 
readily quoted to show why royal and aristocratic 
rulers were little likely to aid its circulation 
amongst the people whom they governed. 
Here, for instance, is a portion of the passage 
on the storming of the Bastile : — 

The spectacles of a life-time were indeed to be 
beheld within the compass of this one scene. . . 
Here were the terrors which sooner or later chill 
the marrow of despotism, and the stern joy with 
which its retribution fires the heart of the patriot. 



I20 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

Here were the servants of tyranny quailing 
before the glance of the people. . . . The towers 
of palaces might be seen afar, where princes 
were quaking at this final assurance of the 
downfall of their despotic sway, knowing that the 
assumed sanctity of royalty was being wafted 
away with every puff of smoke which spread 
itself over the sky, and their irresponsibility melt- 
ing in fires lighted by the hands which they had 
vainly attempted to fetter, and blown by the 
breath which they had imagined they could stifle. 
They had denied the birth of that liberty whose 
baptism in fire and in blood was now being cele- 
brated in a many-voiced chant with which the 
earth should ring for centuries. Some from 
other lands were already present to hear and 
join in it; some free Britons to aid, some won- 
dering slaves of other despots to slink home- 
wards with whispered tidings of its import ; for 
from that day to this, the history of the fall of 
the Bastile has been told as a secret in the vine- 
yards of Portugal, and among the groves of Spain, 
and in the patriotic conclaves of the youth of 
Italy, while it has been loudly and joyfully pro- 
claimed from one end to the other of Great 
Britain, till her lisping children are familiar with 
the tale. 

Besides such passages as this, scarcely likely 
to please the French king, there was the special 
ground for his objection that his immediate 
ancestor, Egalite, was introduced into the story, 
and depicted in no favorable light his efforts to 
inflame the popular violence for his selfish ends, 



THE GREAT SUCCESS. 121 

his hypocrisy, his cowardice, and so on, being 
held up to contempt. Mrs. Marcet, when she 
read all this, came breathless to Harriet Marti- 
neau to ask her how she could have made such 
a blunder as to write a story that plainly would 
(and, of course, in fact, did) put an end to the 
official patronage of her series in France, and 
would destroy for ever any hopes that she might 
have entertained of being received at the Court 
of Louis Philippe ? Greatly surprised was the 
good lady at finding Harriet's reverence for that 
monarch so limited in extent. She replied to 
her kind friend that she ''wrote with a view to 
the people, and especially the most suffering of 
them ; and the crowned heads must for once take 
their chance for their feelings." 

At the very moment that Mrs. Marcet's 
remonstrance was made. Miss Martineau was 
writing a story of a character likely to be even 
more distasteful to the Emperer of Russia than 
this one to the King of the French. She had 
found it difficult to illustrate the theory of the 
currency in a story treating of the existence of 
civilized people. The only situation in which 
she could find persons, above the rank of sav- 
ages, transacting their exchanges by aicT of a 
kind of money which made the business only 
one remove from bartering, was amongst the 
Polish exiles in Siberia. She therefore wrote 



122 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

The Chai'med Sea, a story founded upon the 
terrible facts of the lives of the exiled Poles 
"in the depths of Eastern Siberia," working 
in *' a silver-mine near the western extremity 
of the Daourian Range, and within hearing of 
the waters of the Baikal when its storms were 
fiercest." Had the melancholy tale been writ- 
ten in the service of the Poles, it could not 
have been more moving. So powerful and 
interesting was it, indeed, that the criticism of 
the EdinbiirgJi Reviezv was that the fiction too 
entirely overpowered the political economy. 
The arrival of The Charmed , Sea in Russia 
changed the favorable opinion which the Czar 
had previously been so kind as to express about 
the Illustrations. Pie had been purchasing 
largely of the French translation of the series 
for distribution amongst his people. But now 
he issued a proclamation ordering every copy 
in Russia of every number to be immediately 
burnt, and forbidding the author ever to set 
foot upon his soil. Austria, equally concerned 
in the Polish business, followed this example, 
and a description of Harriet Martineau's per- 
son was hung in the appointed places, amidst 
the lists of the proscribed, all over Russia, 
Austria, and Austrian-Italy. Despots, at least, 
had no admiration for her politics. 

The only important adverse criticism in the 



THE GREAT SUCCESS. 123 

press appeared in the Quarterly Review j^ The 
reviewer objected impartially to every one of 
the twelve stories which had then appeared. 
Every circumstance which could arouse preju- 
dice against the series was taken advantage 
of, from party political feeling and religious 
bigotry, down to the weakness of fluid philan- 
thropy, and ''the prudery and timidity of the 
middle-classes of England." The principal 
ground of attack was the story which dealt 
with Malthusianism, Weal and Woe in Garve- 
loch. 

When the course of my exposition brought 
me to the population subject, I, with my youth- 
ful and provincial mode of thought and feeling 
— brought up, too, amidst the prudery which is 
found in its great force in our middle class — 
could not but be sensible that I risked much in 
writing and publishing on a subject which was 
not universally treated in the pure, benevolent, 
and scientific spirit of Malthus himself. ... I 
said nothing to anybody ; and, when the num- 
ber was finished, I read it aloud to my mother 
and aunt. If there had been any opening 
whatever for doubt or dread, I was sure that 

* In the same number, by the way, appeared the notorious 
biting and sarcastic notice of Tennyson's second volume. It 
is a distinction, indeed, for a critical review, that one number 
should have devoted half its space to violently unfavorable 
criticisms of Alfred Tennyson's poetry and Harriet Martineau's 
political economy. 



124 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

these two ladies would have given me abundant 
warning and exhortation — both from their 
very keen sense of propriety and their anxious 
affection for me. But they were as complacent 
and easy as they had been interested and atten- 
tive. I saw that all ought to be safe. 

The Quarterly Review seized the opportunity 
of the appearance of this number to make a 
vile . attack upon the series and its writer. 
Harriet suffered under it to a degree which 
seems almost excessive. The review is so 
obviously full of fallacies, as regards its Polit- 
ical Economy, that any person whose opinion 
was worth having could hardly hesitate in 
deciding that she, and not her critic, was talk- 
ing common-sense and arguing logically. As 
to the personal part of the article, it is, though 
scurrilous, and even indecent, so very funny 
that the attacked might almost have forgotten 
the insult in the amusement. Nevertheless, 
the writers, Croker and Lockhart, did their 
worst. Croker openly said that he expected to 
lose his pension very shortly, and, being wish- 
ful to make himself a literary position before 
that event happened, he had begun by "toma- 
hawking Miss Martineau." All that could be 
painful to her as a woman, and injurious to her 
as a writer, was said, or attempted to be con- 
veyed, in this article. 



THE GREAT SUCCESS. 12$ 

Let us see what it was all about. Garveloch, 
one of the Hebridean islands, is seen in the 
" Illustration " rapidly multiplying its popula- 
tion, both by early marriages and by immigra- 
tion, under the stimulus of a passing prosperity 
in the fishing industry. The influx of capital 
and the increase of the demand for food, have 
led to such an improvement in the cultivation 
of the land, that the food produce of the island 
has been doubled in ten years. Ella, the hero- 
ine (a fine, strong, self-contained, helpful 
woman — one of the noblest female characters 
in these works), foresees that if the reckless 
increase of population continues, the supply of 
food will by-and-by run short. Her interlocutor 
asks how this will be the case, since the popu- 
lation will surely not double again, as it has 
done already, in ten years } Then the Quarterly 
quotes Ella's reply, and comments on it : — 

*' Certainly not ; but say twenty, thirty, fifty or 
any number of years you choose ; still, as the 
number of the people doubles itself for ever, 
while the produce of the land does not, the 
people must increase faster than the produce." 

This is rare logic and arithmetic, and not a 
little curious as natural history. A plain person 
now would have supposed that if the produce 
doubled itself in ten, and the people only in 
a hundred years, the people would not increase 
quite so fast as the produce, seeing that at the 



126 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

end of the first century the population would be 
multiplied but by two, the produce by one thous- 
and and twenty-four. But these are the dis- 
coveries of genius ! Why does Miss Martineau 
write, except to correct our mistaken notions 
and to expound to us the mysteries of "the 
principle of population." 

The reviewer goes on to suggest, in the 
broadest language, that she has confounded the 
rate of the multiplication of the herring-fisher- 
women with that of the herrings themselves ; 
reproves her for writing on ''these ticklish 
topics " with so little physiological information ; 
and tells her that she, "poor innocent, has been 
puzzling over Mr. Malthus's arithmetical and 
geometrical ratios for knowledge which she 
should have obtained by a simple question or 
two of her mamma." In one and the same 
paragraph, he tells her that he is "loth to bring 
a blush unnecessarily upon the cheek of any 
woman," and asks her if she picked up her infor- 
mation on the subject " in her conferences with 
the Lord Chancellor } " 

This is enough to show to what a sensitive 
young lady was exposed in illustrating " a prin- 
ciple as undeniable as the multiplication table," 
and in stating the facts upon which hangs the 
explanation of the poverty, and therefore of 



THE GREAT SUCCESS. \2*J 

a large part of the vice and misery, of mankind. 
Miss Martineau's exposition was, of course, 
entirely right, and the fallacy in the review is 
obvious, one would suppose on the surface. 
The reviewer's error consists in his assumption 
— the falsity of which is at once apparent on the 
face of the statement — that land can go on 
doubling its produce every ten years, for an 
indefinite period. So far from this being true, 
the fact is that the limit of improving the culti- 
vation of land is soon reached. 

Better agricultural treatment may easily make 
half-cultivated land bring forth double its previ- 
ous produce ; but the highest pitch of farming 
once reached — as it comparatively soon is — 
the produce cannot be further increased ; and 
even before this limit is reached, the return for 
each additional application of capital and labor 
becomes less and less proportionately bountiful. 
This is the truth known to political economists 
as " the Law of the Diminishing Return of 
Land." Taken in conjunction with the fact 
that the human race can double for ever, theo- 
retically, and in reality does multiply its numbers 
with each generation, checked only by the fore- 
thought of the more prudent and the operations 
of famine, war, crime, and the diseases caused 
by poverty, this law explains why mankind does 



128 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

not more rapidly improve its condition — why 
the poor have been always with us — and why 
teaching such as Harriet Martineau here gave 
must be received into the popular mind before 
the condition of society can be expected to be 
improved in the only way possible, by the wis- 
dom and prudence of its members. 

Painful as was the attack she had undergone, 
intensely as she had suffered from its character 
and nature. Miss Martineau did not allow what 
she had felt of personal distress to have any 
influence on her future writings. Her moral 
courage had been well trained and exercised, 
first by the efforts that her mind had had to 
make in following her conscience as a guide to 
the formation of opinions, in opposition to the 
tendency implanted by her mother's treatment 
to bow supinely before authority; secondly, 
by the lesson of endurance which her deafness 
had brought to her. She had now to show, for 
the first, but by no means the last time, that 
hers was one of those temperaments which 
belong to all leaders of men, whether in physical 
or moral warfare; that danger was to her a 
stimulus, and that her courage rose the higher 
the greater the demand for its exercise. 

Praise and blame, appreciation and defama- 
tion, strengthened and enlarged her mind during 



THE GREAT SUCCESS. 1 29 

this period. But at the end of it, Sydney Smith 
could say : '' She has gone through such a 
season as no girl before ever knew, and she 
has kept her own mind, her own manners, and 
her own voice. She's safe." 



CHAPTER VI. 

FIVE ACTIVE YEARS. 

On the conclusion of the publication of the 
Illustrations of Political Economy, Harriet went 
to the United States, and travelled there for more 
than two years. Her fame had preceded her ; 
and she received the warm and gracious greeting 
from the generous people of America that they 
are ever ready to give to distinguished guests 
from their ''little Mother-isle." She travelled 
not only in the Northern States, but in the 
South and the West too, going in the one direc- 
tion from New York to New Orleans, and in 
the other to Chicago and Michigan. Every- 
where she was received with eager hospitality. 
Public institutions were freely thrown open to 
her, and eminent citizens vied with each other 
in showing her attention, publicly and privately. 
The most noteworthy incident in the course of 
the whole two years was her public declaration 
of her anti-slavery principles. The Anti-Slavery 
movement was in its beginning. The aboli- 
tionists were the subjects of abuse and social 



FIVE ACTIVE YEARS. 131 

persecution, and Miss Martineau was quickly 
made aware that by a declaration in their favor 
she would risk incurring odium, and might 
change her popularity in society into disrepute 
and avoidance. It would have been perfectly 
easy for a less active conscience and a less true 
moral sense to have evaded the question, in such 
a manner that neither party could have upbraided 
her for her action. She might simply have said 
that she was there as a learner, not as a teacher; 
that her business was to survey American 
society, and not to take any share in its party 
disputes, or to give any opinion on the political 
questions of a strange land. Such paltering 
with principle was impossible to Harriet Mar- 
tineau. She did not obtrude her utterances on 
the subject, but when asked in private society 
what she thought, she frankly spoke out her 
utter abhorrence, not merely of slavery in the 
abstract, but also of the state of the Southern 
slave-holders and their human property. She 
could not help seeing that this candor often gave 
offense ; but that was not her business when her 
opinion was sought on a moral question. 

The really searching test of her personal char- 
acter did not come, however, with regard to this 
matter, till she went to stay for a while in Bos- 
ton, the head-quarters of the abolitionists, fifteen 
months after her arrival in America. It hap- 



132 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

pened that she reached Boston the very day a 
ladies' anti-slavery meeting was broken up by 
the violence of a mob, and that Garrison, falling 
into the hands of the enraged multitude, was 
half-murdered in the street. Harriet had given 
a promise, long previously, to attend an aboli- 
tionists' meeting ; and though these occurrences 
showed her that there was actual personal dan- 
ger in keeping her word, she was not to be 
intimidated. She went to the very next meet- 
ing of the ladies' society, which was held a 
month after the one so violently disturbed, and 
there, being unexpectedly begged to "give them 
the comfort " of a few words from her, she rose, 
and as the official report says, " with great dig- 
nity and simplicity of manner," declared her full 
sympathy with the principles of the association. 
She knew well how grave would be the social 
consequences to her of thus throwing in her lot 
with the despised and insulted abolitionists ; 
but she felt that ''she never could be happy 
again " if she shrunk from the duty of expres- 
sion thrust upon her. The results to her were 
as serious as she had apprehended. She re- 
ceived innumerable personal insults and slights, 
public and private, where before all had been 
homage ; the Southern newspapers threatened 
her personal safety, calling her a foreign '' incen- 
diary ; " and, to crown all, she had to give 



FIVE ACTIVE YEARS, 1 33 

up an intended Ohio tour, on the information of 
an eminent Cincinnati merchant that he had 
heard with his own ears the details of a plot to 
hang her on the wharf at Louisville, before the 
respectable inhabitants could intervene, in order 
to "warn all other meddlesome foreigners." 

All this abuse and insult and threatening 
from the lower kind of persons, interested for 
their purses, had, of course, no influence upon 
the hundred private friendships that she had 
formed. Ardent and deep was the affection 
with which many Americans came to regard 
her, and with some of them her intimate friend- 
ship lasted through all the succeeding forty 
years of her life. Emerson was one of these 
friends, and Garrison another. It was her fre- 
quent correspondence with these and many 
others that kept her interest in the affairs of 
the United States so active, and made her so 
well-informed about them as to give her the 
great authority that she had, both in England 
and America, during the life and death struggle 
of the Union, so that at that time, when she 
was writing leaders- for the London Daily News ^ 
Mr. W. E. Forster said that ''it was Harriet 
Martineau alone who was keeping English pub- 
lic opinion about America on the right side 
through the press." 

Loath to leave such friendships behind, and 



134 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

yet longing for home, she. sailed from New- 
York at the end of July, 1836, and reached 
Liverpool on the 26th August. A parting act 
of American chivalry was that her ship-passage 
was paid for her by some unknown friend. 

It was while she was in the United States 
that the first portrait of her which I have 
seen was painted. She herself did not like it, 
calling the attitude melodramatic ; but her sister 
Rachel, I am told, always declared that it was 
the only true portrait of Harriet that was ever 
taken. At this point, then, some idea of her 
person may be given. 

She was somewhat above the middle height, 
and at this time had a slender figure. The 
face in the portrait is oval ; the forehead rather 
broad, as well as high, but not either to a re- 
markable degree. The most noticeable pecu- 
liarity of the face is found in a slight projection 
of the under lip. The nose is straight, not at 
all turned up at the end, but yet with a definite 
tip to it. The eyes are a clear gray, with a 
calm, steadfast, yet sweet gaze ; indeed there is 
an almost appealing look in them. The hair is 
of so dark a brown as to appear nearly black. 
A tress of it (cut off twenty years later than 
this American visit, when it had turned snow- 
white) has been given to me ; and I find the 
treasured relic to be of exceptionally fine tex- 



FIVE ACTIVE YEARS. 1 35 

ture — a sure sign of a delicate and sensitive 
nervous organization. Her hands and feet were 
small. 

She was certainly not beautiful ; besides the 
slight projection of the lower lip the face has 
the defect of the cheeks sloping in too much 
towards the chin. But she was not strikingly- 
plain either. The countenance in this picture 
has a look both of appealing sweetness and of 
strength in reserve ; and one feels that with 
such beauty of expression it could not fail to be 
attractive to those who looked upon it with 
sympathy. 

The competition amongst the publishers for 
Miss Martineau's book on America was an 
amusing contrast to the scorn with which her 
proposals for her Political Enonoiny had been re- 
ceived. Murray sent a message through a friend, 
offering to undertake the American work ; and 
letters from two other publishers were awaiting 
her arriv^al in England. On the day that the 
newspapers announced that she had reached 
town no fewer than three of the chief London 
publishers called upon her with proposals. She 
declined those of Bentley and Colburn, and 
accepted the offer of Messrs. Saunders and 
Otley to pay her ;£300 per volume for the first 
edition of three thousand copies. The book 
appeared in three volumes, so that she received 



136 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

;£900 for it. She completed the three goodly 
volumes in six months. 

She had wished to call the book Theory and 
Practice of Society in America, a title which would 
have exactly expressed the position that she took 
up in it, viz., that the Americans should be j udged 
by the degree in which they approached, in 
their daily lives, to the standard of the principles 
laid down in their Constitution. Her publishers 
so strongly objected to this title, that she con- 
sented to call the work simply Society in America. 
She held to her scheme none the less, and the 
book proceeds upon it. She quotes the Declara- 
tion of Independence that all men are created 
equal, with an inalienable right to life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness, and that Govern- 
ments derive their just powers from the con- 
sent of the governed. ''Every true citizen," she 
claims, " must necessarily be content to have 
his self-government tried by the test of the 
principles to which, by his citizenship, he has 
become a subscriber." She brings social life 
in the United States of 1834-6 to this test 
accordingly. 

That method of approaching her subject had 
some advantages. It enabled her to treat with 
peculiar force the topics of slavery, of the ex- 
clusion of women from political affairs, and 
of the subservience to the despotism of pub- 



FIVE ACTIVE YEARS. 1 3/ 

lie opinion which she found to exist at that time 
in America. 

But she herself came to see, in after times, 
that her plmt (leaving the details aside) was 
radically faulty. She was, as she says, "at the 
most metaphysicial period" of her mental his- 
tory. Thus, she failed at the moment to perceive 
that she commenced her subject at the wrong 
end in taking a theory and judging the facts of 
American society by their agreement or dis- 
agreement with that a priori philosophy. It 
was the theory that had to be judged by the 
way in which the people lived under a govern- 
ment framed upon it, and not the people by the 
degree in which they live up to the theory. 
The English public wanted a book that would 
help them to know the American public and its 
ways ; the Americans required to see through 
the eyes of an observant, cultivated foreigner, 
what they were being and doing. It is this 
which a traveller has to do — to observe/^^r/i".- 
to draw lessons from them, if he will, but not to 
consider the facts in their relationship to a 
pre-conceived theory. Human experience is 
perennially important and eternally interesting ; 
and this is what a traveller has to note and 
record. Political philosophies must be gathered 
from experience instead of (what she attempt- 
ed) the real life being viewed only as related 



138 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

to the philosophy. In fine, her error was in 
treating abstractedly what was necessarily a 
concrete theme. 

With this objection to the scheme of the 
book, all criticism may end. All criticism did 
not end (any more than it began) in this way in 
1837. Speaking out so boldly as she did on a 
variety of the most important social topics, she 
naturally aroused opposition, which the power 
and eloquence of the style did not mitigate. 

The anti-slavery tone of the book alone 
would have ensured violent attacks upon it and 
its author, as, after her ostracism because of 
her anti-slavery declaration, she well knew 
would be the case. "This subject haunts us 
on every page," distressfully wrote Margaret 
Fuller; and greatly exaggerated though this 
statement was, it certainly is true that there is 
hardly a chapter in which the reader is allowed 
to forget that the curse of humanity made mer- 
chandise, shadowed life, directly or indirectly, 
throughout the whole United States. Neither 
by the holders of slaves in the South, nor by 
their accessories in the North, was it possible 
that she could be regarded otherwise than as 
an enemy, the more powerful, and therefore 
the more to be hated and abused, because of 
her standing and her ability. In estimating 
the courage and disinterestedness which she 



FIVE ACTIVE YEARS. 1 39 

displayed in so decisively bearing her witness 
against the state of American society under 
the slave system, it must be remembered not 
only that she had many valued personal friends 
in the South, and amongst the anti-abolition- 
ists of the North, but also that she knew that 
she was closing against herself a wide avenue 
for the dissemination of her opinions upon any 
subject whatsoever. No book written by an 
abolitionist would be admitted into any one 
of thousands of American homes. The aboli- 
tionists reprinted portions of Society of Amer- 
ica, as a pamphlet, and distributed it broadcast. 
The result was that, up to the time when 
slavery was abolished Harriet Martineau was 
continually held up to scorn and reprobation in 
Southern newspapers, "in the good company of 
Mrs. Chapman and Mrs. Harriet Beecher 
Stowe." 

Even greater courage was displayed by Har- 
riet Martineau in her boldness of utterance 
upon some other points, about which freedom 
of thought was as obnoxious in England as in 
America. When she maintained that divorce 
should be permissible by mutual consent, pro- 
vided only that the interests of children and 
the distribution of property were equitably 
arranged for ; when she pleaded for the eman- 
cipation of women ; or when she devoted a 



I40 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

chapter to showing the evils which spring from 
the accumulation of enormous fortunes, and 
incidentally attacked the laws and customs of 
primogeniture, of the transfer of land, and the 
like, which are devised specially to facilitate 
and encourage such accumulations : in these 
and other passages of an equally radical nature, 
she braved a large body of opinion in English 
society, as well as in the other country for 
which she wrote. She mentions subsequently, 
that for many years she was occasionally startled 
by finding herself regarded in various quarters 
as a free-thinker upon dangerous subjects, and 
as something of a demagogue. I have little 
doubt that the " advanced " political philosophy. 
of Society in America did originate such suspi- 
cions in minds of the Conservative order, " the 
timid party," as she described them in this 
same book. Yet she adds : 

I have never regretted its boldness of speech. 
I felt a relief in having opened my mind which 
I would at no time have exchanged for any gain 
of reputation or fortune. The time had come 
when, having experienced what might be called 
the extremes of obscurity and difficulty first, and 
influence and success afterwards, I could pro- 
nounce that there was nothing for which it was 
worth sacrificing freedom of thought and speech. 

There was but little in Society in America of 
the ordinary book of travels. As an account of 



FIVE ACTIVE YEARS. 141 

the political condition and the social arrange- 
ments of the American people it was of singular 
value. But the personal incidents of travel, the 
descriptions of scenery, the reminiscences of 
eminent persons, of all which Harriet Martineau 
had gathered a store, were entirely omitted 
from this work. Messrs. Saunders and Otley 
suggested to her that she should make a second 
book out of this kind of material. She con- 
sented ; and wrote her Retrospect of Western 
Travel. She completed the manuscript of this 
in December, 1837, and it was published soon 
afterwards in three volumes. The publishers 
gave her six hundred pounds for it. 

The fifteen hundred pounds which she thus 
earned exceeded in amount the whole of what 
she had then received for her Ilhistrations of 
Political Economy. The last-named great work 
was nearly all published upon the absurdly 
unequal terms which Charles Fox had secured 
from her in the beginning. It was character- 
istic of her generosity in pecuniary matters and 
her loyalty to her friends, that although her 
agreement with Fox was dissoluble at the end 
of every five numbers, she nevertheless allowed 
it to hold good, and permitted him to pocket a 
very leonine share of her earnings throughout 
the whole publication of the original series, 
only claiming a revision of the terms when 



142 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

she commenced afresh, as it were, with the 
*'Poor-Law," and ''Taxation" tales. Thus the 
immense popularity of the Ilhistrations had not 
greatly enriched her. A portion of her earnings 
by them was invested in her American tour ; 
and now that she received this return from her 
books of travels she felt it her duty to make 
a provision for the future. She purchased a 
deferred annuity of one hundred pounds to begin 
in April, 1850. It displayed a characteristic 
calm confidence in herself that she should thus 
have entirely locked up her earnings for twelve 
years. She clearly felt a quiet assurance that 
her brain and her hand would serve to maintain 
her, at least as long as she was in the flower of 
her age. 

The six volumes about America were not the 
whole of her work during the first eighteen 
months after her return to England. She wrote 
an article on Miss Sedgwick's works for the 
Westniinsici' Review, and several other short 
papers for various magazines. The extraordi- 
nary industry with which she returned to labor 
after her long rest requires no comment. 

Early in 1838 she wrote a work called How to 
Observe in Morals and Manners. It forms a 
crown octavo volume of two hundred and thirty- 
eight pages, and was published by Mr. Charles 
Knight, The book is an interesting one, both 



FIVE ACTIVE YEARS. 143 

for the reflections which it contains upon the 
subject of its title, and as indicating the method 
which she had herself pursued in her study of 
the morals and manners of the country in which 
she had been travelling. There is certainly no 
failure in the courage with which she expresses 
her convictions. She admits elsewhere that the 
abuse which she received from America had so 
acted upon her mind that she had come to quail 
at the sight of letters addressed in a strange 
handwriting, or of newspapers sent from the 
United States. But there is no trace in this 
her next considerable work of any tendency to 
follow rather than to lead the public opinion of 
her time. One paragraph only may be quoted 
to indicate this fact : 

Persecution for opinion is always going on. 
It can be inflicted out of the province of Law as 
well as through it. . . . Whatever a nation may 
tell him of its love of liberty should go for little 
if he sees a virtuous man's children taken from 
him on the ground of his holding an unusual 
religious belief ; or citizens mobbed for assert- 
ing the rights of negroes ; or moralists treated 
with public scorn for carrying out allowed prin- 
ciples to their ultimate issues; or scholars 
oppressed for throwing new light on the sacred 
text; or philosophers denounced for bringing 
fresh facts to the surface of human knowledge, 
whether they seem to agree or not with long 
established suppositions.* 

* Hmv io Ob sen' e. p. 204. 



144 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

The next piece of work that Harriet did in 
this spring of 1838 was of a very different order. 
The Poor-Law Commissioners were desirous of 
issuing a series of " Guides to Service," and 
application was made to Miss Martineau to write 
some of these little books. She undertook The 
Maid of All Work, The Housemaid, The Lady s 
Maid Siud The Dress-makei'. These were issued 
without her name on the title-page, but the 
authorship was an open secret. 

She was a thoroughly good housekeeper her- 
self. Her conscience went into this, as into all 
her other business. '' Housewifery is suppose(^ 
to transact itself," she wrote ; ''but in reality it 
requires all the faculties which can be brought 
to bear upon it, and all the good moral habits 
which conscience can originate." It was in this 
spirit that she wrote instructions for servants. 
The fine moral tone invariably discoverable in 
her works, is as delightful here as elsewhere. 
But the little *' Guides to Service," contain also 
the most precise and practical directions for the 
doing of the household duties and the needle- 
work which fall to the hands of the classes of 
servants for whom she wrote. Practical hints 
are given from which the majority of these 
classes of women-workers might learn much, 
for brains tell in the mean and dirty scrubbery 
of life as well as in pleasanter things, and science 



FIVE ACTIVE YEARS. 1 45 

is to be applied to common domestic duties as 
to bigger undertakings. The heart and mind of 
Harriet Martineau were equal to teaching upon 
matters such as these, as well as to studying the 
deepe/ relations of mankind in political econ- 
omy, or the state of society in a foreign land. 
Her great power of sympathy enabled her to 
enter fully into every human position. So well 
was the maid-of-all-work's station described, and 
her duties indicated, and her trials pointed out, 
and how she might solace herself under those 
troubles discovered, and the way in which her 
work should be set about detailed, that the 
rumor spread pretty widely that Harriet had 
once occupied such a situation herself. She 
regarded this mistake with complacency, as a 
tribute to the practical character of her little 
work. 

As a fact, she was herself a capable house- 
wife. Her housekeeping was always well done. 
Her own hands, indeed, as well as her head, 
were employed in it on occasion. When in her 
home, she daily filled her lamp herself. She 
dusted her own books, too, invariably. Some- 
times she did more. Soon after her establish- 
ment at the Lakes (an event which we have not 
yet reached, but the anecdote is in place here), 
a lady who greatly reverenced her for her writ- 
ings called upon her in her new home, accom- 



146 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

panied by a gentleman friend. As the visitors 
approached the house by the carriage-drive, 
they saw someone perched on a set of kitchen 
steps, cleaning the drawing-room windows. It 
was the famous authoress herself ! She calmly 
went for her trumpet, to listen to their business ; 
and when they had introduced themselves, she 
asked them in, and entered into an interesting 
conversation on various literary topics. Before 
they left, she explained, with evident amuse- 
ment at having been caught at her housemaid's 
duties, that the workmen had been long about 
the house ; that this morning, when the dirty 
windows might for the first time be cleaned, 
one of her servants had gone off to marry a 
carpenter, and the other to see the ceremony ; 
and so the mistress, tired of the dirt, had set to 
work to wash and polish her window for herself. 
An article on '' Domestic Service," for the 
Westminster Review, was written easily, while 
her mind was so full of the subject, in the be- 
ginning of June, 1838. But a great enterprise 
was before her — a novel; and at length she 
settled down to this, beginning it on her thirty- 
sixth birthday, June 12th, 1838. The writing 
of this new book was interrupted by a tour in 
Scotland during August and September, and by 
writing a remarkable and eloquent article on 
slavery, " The Martyr Age of the United 



FIVE ACTIVE YEARS. 1 47 

States/' which occupies fifty-five pages of the 
Westminster Reviezu in the January, 1839, num- 
ber of that publication. The novel got finished, 
however, in February of this latter year ; and 
it was published by Easter under the title of 
Deerbrook. 

Great expectations had been entertained by 
the literary public of Harriet Martineau's first 
novel. The excellences of her IlltLstrations as 
works of fiction had been so marked and so 
many, that it was anticipated that she might 
write a novel of the highest order when released 
from the trammels under which she wrote those 
tales. To most of those who had expected so 
much Deerbrook was a complete disappointment. 
I believe I may justly say that it is the weakest 
of all Harriet Martineau's writings. It is, in- 
deed, far superior in all respects to nine hundred 
out of every thousand novels published. But 
she is not judged by averages. A far higher^ 
standard of literary art is that to which we ex- 
pect Harriet Martineau's writings to conform. 

The book is deficient in story. Deerbrook is 
a country village, where two sisters from Birm- 
ingham, Hester and Margaret Ibbotson, take up 
their temporary abode. Mr. Hope, the village 
surgeon, falls in love with Margaret ; but being 
told that Hester loves him, while Margaret is 
attached to Philip Enderby, Hope decides to 



148 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

propose to Hester ; is accepted, married to the 
sister he does not love, and sets up housekeep- 
ing with the sister with whom he is in love as 
an inmate of his home. The wife, moreover, is 
of a jealous, exacting disposition, ever on the 
watch for some token of neglect of her feelings 
by her friends, anxious, irritable, and hyper- 
sensitive. 

Here is a situation which, the characters 
being what they are described to be, could in 
real life eventuate only in either violent tragedy 
or long, slow heart-break. A woman of ultra- 
sensitive and refined feelings could not live 
with a husband and a sister under such circum- 
stances without discovering the truth. A man 
of active temperament and warm emotions, 
who declares to himself on the night of his 
return from his wedding tour that his marriage 
*' has been a mistake, that he has desecrated 
his own home, and doomed to withering the 
best affections of his nature," — such a man, 
with the woman he really loves living in his 
home, beside the unloved wife, could not com- 
pletely conceal his state of mind from every- 
body, and presently find that after all he likes 
the one he has married best. Yet in the impos- 
sible manner just indicated do all things end in 
Deej'brook. The interest of the book is then 
suddenly shifted to Margaret and Enderby. 



FIVE ACTIVE YEARS. 149 

Hope and Hester become mere accessories. 
But the plot does not improve. The Deer- 
brook people, hitherto adorers of their doctor, 
suddenly take to throwing stones at him, and 
to mobbing his house, because he votes for the 
Parliamentary candidate opposed by the great 
man of the village, and because they take it 
into their heads (not a particle of reason why 
they do so being shown,) that he anatomizes 
bodies from the graveyard. We are invited to 
believe that though his practice had been singu- 
larly successful, all his patients deserted him ; 
and notwithstanding that Hester and Margaret 
had each seventy pounds a year of private 
income, the household was thus reduced to 
such distress that they could not afford gloves, 
and had to part with all their servants, and 
dined as a rule off potatoes and bread and but- 
ter ! Then Margaret's lover, Enderby, hears 
that she and Hope loved each other before 
Hope married ; and though he does not for a 
moment suspect anything wrong in the present, 
and though he passionately loves Margaret, 
this supposed discovery that he is not her first 
love causes him to peremptorily and with- 
out explanation break off the engagement. 
Presently, however, an epidemic comes and 
restores confidence in Mr. Hope ; and Ender- 
by's sister, who had given him the information 



ISO HARRIET MARTINEAV. 

on which he acted, confesses that she had exag- 
gerated the facts and invented part of her 
story ; and so it all ends, and they live happily 
ever after ! 

Feeble and untrue as are plot and characters 
in this *'poor novel " (as Carlyle without injus- 
tice called it), yet many scenes are well written, 
the details are truly colored, and every page is 
illuminated with thought of so high an order 
and language so brilliant, so flowing, so felici- 
tous, that one forgives, for the sake of merits 
such as these, the failure of the fiction to be 
either true or interesting. This seemed to 
show, nevertheless, that Harriet could write 
essays, and travels, and didactic and philosoph- 
ical works, but could not write a novel except 
*'with a purpose," when the accomplishment of 
the purpose might excuse any other shortcom- 
ings. But when one considers the great excel- 
lence of many of the Illustrations^ the decided 
drawing of the characters, the truthful analysis 
of the springs of human action, the manner in 
which the incidents are combined and arranged 
to develop and display dispositions and histo- 
ries, it becomes clear that she had great powers 
as an imaginative depicter of human nature 
and social life, and that there must have been 
other causes than sheer incapacity for the faults 
and the feebleness of Deerbrook. 



FIVE ACTIVE YEARS. 151 

The first cause was what seems to me a mis- 
taken theory about plots in fiction, which she 
had adopted since writing the Illustrations. 
She now fancied that a perfect plot miLst be 
taken from life, forgetting that we none of us 
know the whole plot of the existence of any 
other creature than ourselves, and that the psy- 
chological insight of the gifted novelist is dis- 
played in arguing from what is known to what 
is unknown, and in combining the primary ele- 
ments of human character into their necessary 
consequences in act and feeling. This error she 
would have been cured from by experience had 
she gone on writing fiction. She might have 
been aided in this by what she naively enough 
avows about Deerbivok : that she supposed 
that she took the story of Hope's marriage 
from the history of a friend of her family, and 
that she afterwards found out that nothing of 
the sort had really happened to him ! She might 
then have asked herself whether the story as she 
had told it was more possible than it was possi- 
ble that gunpowder should be put to flame with- 
out an explosion. A girl in her teens might 
have been forgiven for playing with the history 
of the wildest passions of the human heart ; but 
Harriet Martineau erred because she tried to 
enslave herself to fact in a matter in which she 
should have inferred, judged from psychological 



152 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

principles, and trusted to the intuitions of her 
own mind for the final working out of her prob- 
lem. As it was, if her ''fact " had been a reality^ 
we should have been compelled to account for 
the placid progress of events by the supposition 
that she had utterly misrepresented the charac- 
ters of the persons involved. 

This bondage to (supposed) fact was one cause 
of her failure. A lesser, but still important rea- 
son for it, was that she tried to imitate Jane 
Austen's style. Her admiration of the works of 
this mistress of the art of depicting human nature 
was very great. Harriet's diary of the period 
when she was preparing to write Deerbrook, 
shows that she re-read Miss Austen's novels, 
and found them "wonderfully beautiful." This 
judgment she annexed to Emma; and again, 
after recording her new reading of Pride and 
Prejudice^ she added, " I think it as clever as 
before ; but Miss Austen seems wonderfully 
afraid of pathos. I long to try." When she did 
"try," she, either intentionally or unconsciously, 
but very decidedly, modelled her style on Miss 
Austen's. But the two women were essentially 
different. Harriet Martineau had an original 
mind ; she did wrong, and prepared the retribu- 
tion of failure for herself, in imitating at all ; 
and Jane Austen was one of the last persons she 
should have imitated. 



FIVE ACTIVE YEARS. 1 53 

The principal reasons for the inferiority of 
Deerbrook, however, are found in her personal 
history. Three months after its publication, she 
was utterly prostrated by an illness which had 
undoubtedly been slowly growing upon her for 
long before. Thus, she wrote her novel under 
the depression and failure of strength caused by 
this malady. The illness itself was partly the 
result of what further tended to make her work 
poor in quality- — the domestic anxieties, mis- 
eries and heart-burnings of that period. 

The three anxious members of her family 
were at this time upon her hands. That brother 
who had succeeded to the father's business, 
and in whose charge it had failed, was at this 
time in London. Before the weaving business 
stopped, Henry Martineau was engaged ; but 
the girl broke off the affair in consequence of 
the downfall of his pecuniary prospects. Henry 
then undertook a wine-merchant's business, and 
wretched with the mortification of his double 
failure in purse and in heart, he yielded to the 
temptations of his new employment, and became 
intemperate. During the time that Deerbrook 
was being written, he was living with his mother 
and sister in London. At the same time Mrs. 
Martineau, now nearing seventy years old, was 
becoming blind. The natural irritability of her 
temper was thus increased. The heart-wearing 



154 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

trials of a home with two such inmates were 
made greater to Harriet by the fact that an 
aged aunt also lived with them, who, besides 
the many cares exacted for the well-being of 
age, added to Harriet's troubles by the neces- 
sity of shielding her from the tempers and 
depressions of the other two. 

It was in this home that Harriet Martineau 
did all the work that has now been recorded 
after her return from America. No one who 
has the least conception of how imperatively 
necessary domestic peace and comfort are for 
the relief of the brain taxed with literary labor, 
will be surprised to hear that Harriet's strength 
and spirits failed during all that summer and 
winter in which she was writing Deerbrooky and 
that presently her health completely broke 
down. 



CHAPTER VII. 

FIVE YEARS OF ILLNESS AND THE MESMERIC 
RECOVERY. 

Almost immediately after the publication of 
Deerbrook Harriet started for a Continental 
tour. She was to escort an invalid cousin to 
Switzerland, and afterwards to travel through 
Italy with two other friends. But her illness 
became so severe by the time that she reached 
Venice that the remainder of the journey had to 
be abandoned. Under medical advice, a couch 
was fitted up in the travelling carriage, and 
upon it, lifted in and out at every stage, she 
returned to England and was conveyed to her 
sister's at Newcastle-on-Tyne. In the autumn 
of that same year (1839) she took up her abode 
in Front street, Tynemouth, in order to remain 
under the medical care of her brother-in-law, 
Mr. Greenhow of Newcastle. 

Her physical sufferings during the next five 
years were very severe, and almost incessant. 
She could not go out of the house, and alter- 
nated only between her bed in one room and her 



156 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

couch in another. From her sick-room window 
she overlooked a narrow space of down, the ruins 
of the priory, the harbor with its traffic, and the 
sea. On the farther side of the harbor she 
could discern through the telescope a railroad, 
a spreading heath, and, on the hills which 
bounded the view, two or three farms. To this 
outlook she, whose life had been hitherto spent 
so actively, and in the midst of such a throng of 
society, found herself confined for a term of five 
years. At the same time her pain was so great 
that she was compelled to take opiates daily. 
** I have observed, with inexpressible shame, 
that with the newspaper in my hand, no details 
of the peril of empires, or of the starving mis- 
eries of thousands, could keep my eye from the 
watch before me, or detain my attention one 
second beyond the time when I might have my 
opiate. For two years, too, I wished and in- 
tended to dispense with my opiate for once, to 
try how much there was to bear, and how I 
should bear it ; but I never did it, strong as was 
the shame of always yielding. I am convinced 
that there is no more possibility of becoming 
inured to acute agony of body, than to par- 
oxysms of remorse — the severest of moral 
pains. A familiar pain becomes more and 
more dreaded, instead of becoming more lightly 
esteemed in proportion to its familiarity. The 



FIVE YEARS OF ILLNESS. 1 5/ 

pain itself becomes more odious, more oppres- 
sive, more feared in proportion to the accumula- 
tion of experience of weary hours, in proportion 
to the aggregate of painful associations which 
every visitation revives." * 

Some indication of what she endured in those 
weary years is given in this quotation. If we 
had to rely upon the inferences to be drawn from 
the amount of work which she did in her sick- 
room, we should naturally suppose the suffering 
not to have been very great ; for she produced, 
in the midst of her illness, as much and as 
noble work as we look for from the most active 
persons in ordinary health. 

The first business of the sick-room life was to 
write both an article for publication, and a 
number of letters of personal appeal to friends, 
on behalf of Oberlin College, an institution 
which was being founded in America for the 
education of persons of color of both sexes, 
and of the students who had been turned out of 
Lane College for their advocacy of anti-slavery 
principles. 

The next undertaking was another novel ; or, 
rather, a history, imaginatively treated, of the 
negro revolution in San Domingo. Toussaint 
L'Ouverture, the leader of the revolution and the 
president of the black Republic of Hayti, was 

* Life in the Sick-Room. 



158 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

the hero of this story. The Hour and the Ma7i, 
as a mere novel, is vastly superior to Deerbrook. 
Harriet wrote it, however, rather as a contribu- 
tion to the same anti-slavery cause for which she 
had written her preceding article, believing 
that it would be useful to that cause to show 
forth the capacity and the high moral character 
which had been displayed by a negro of the 
blackest shade when in possession of power. 
The work was begun in May, 1840, and pub- 
lished in November of the same year. 

Lord Jeffrey, in a familiar private letter to 
Empson, his successor in the editorship of the 
Edmburgh Review^ wrote thus of TJie Hour and 
the Man : — 

I have read Harriet's first volume, and give 
in my adhesion to her Black Prince with all my 
heart and soul. The book is really not only 
beautiful and touching, but noble ; and I do 
not recollect when I have been more charmed, 
whether by very sweet and eloquent writing 
and glowing description, or by elevated as well 
as tender sentiments. . . . The book is calcu- 
lated to make its readers better, and does great 
honor to the heart as well as the talent and 
fancy of the author. I would go a long way to 
kiss the hem of her garment, or the hand that 
delineated this glowing and lofty representation 
of purity and noble virtue. And she must not 
only be rescued from all debasing anxieties 
about her subsistence, but placed in a station of 



FIVE YEARS OF ILLNESS. 1 59 

affluence and honor ; though I believe she truly 
cares for none of these things. It is sad to 
think that she suffers so much, and may even 
be verging to dissolution. 

Even the morose and ungracious Carlyle, 
writing to Emerson of this book, is obliged to 
say " It is beautiful as a child's heart ; and in so 
shrewd a brain ! " While Florence Nightingale 
declares that she "can scarcely refrain from 
thinking of it as the greatest of historical 
romances." 

The allusion in the latter part of Lord Jeffrey's 
letter was to a proposal just then made to give 
Harriet Martineau one of the Civil List literary 
pensions. This idea had been mooted first dur- 
ing the progress of her Illiisti^ations, and again 
after her return from America ; but upon each 
occasion she had stated privately that she would 
not be willing to accept it. She replied from 
Tynemouth to the same effect to Mr. Hutton, 
who wrote to inquire if she would now be thus 
assisted. Her objection was, in the first place, 
one of principle ; she disapproved of the money 
of the people being dispensed in any pensions at 
the sole will of the Ministry, instead of being 
conferred directly by the representatives of the 
people. Her second reason was, that after 
accepting she would feel herself bound to the 
Ministers, and would be understood by the pub- 



l60 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

lie to be so bound, and would thus suffer a loss 
of both freedom and usefulness during whatever 
life might remain to her. Lord Melbourne, a 
few months later, in July, 1841, made her an 
explicit offer of a pension of £,\^0 per annum, 
and her answer to the Minister was substan- 
tially the same as to her friend. She said that 
while taxation was levied so unequally, and 
while Parliament had no voice in the distribu- 
tion of pensions, she would rather receive public 
aid from the parish, if necessary, than as a pen- 
sioner. She added an earnest plea that all influ- 
ential persons who held themselves indebted on 
public grounds to any writer, would show that 
gratitude by endeavoring to make better copy- 
right arrangements and foreign treaties, so as to 
secure to authors the full, due and independent 
reward of their efforts. 

The rare (perhaps mistaken) generosity of this 
refusal can only be appreciated by bearing in 
mind that she had invested a large part of her 
earnings a few years before in a form from which 
she was now receiving no return. During her 
illness she was really in want of money, so far as 
to have to accept assistance from relatives. For 
her charities she partly provided by doing fancy- 
work, sending subscriptions both in this form 
and in the shape of articles for publication to the 
anti-slavery cause in America 



FIVE YEARS OF ILLNESS. l6l 

In the early part of 1841 she began a series of 
four children's stories, which were published 
under the general title of The Playfellow. 
These admirable tales are still amongst the best- 
known and most popular of her writings ; simple, 
vivid and interesting, they are really model chil- 
dren's stories, and it would have been quite 
impossible for any reader to imagine that they 
were written by an invalid, in constant suffer- 
ing. Settlers at Home was the first one written. 
The Prince and the Peasant came next ; then 
Feats on the Fjord ; and, finally, that one from 
which I quoted largely in an early chapter. The 
Croft on Boys. By the time the last-named was 
finished she was very ill, and believed that she 
should never write another book. 

Her interest in all public affairs continued, 
nevertheless, to be as keen as ever. In 1841 
she wrote for publication a long letter to sup- 
port the American Anti-Slavery Society under 
a secession from its ranks of a number of per- 
sons, chiefly clerical, who objected, of all 
things, to women being allowed to be members 
of the society ! Another piece of work which 
she did for the public benefit was by a course 
of correspondence, full of delicate tact, to per- 
sonally reconcile Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Cob- 
den, and so to pave the way for the amicable 



l62 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

work of the two statesmen in the repeal of the 
Corn Laws. 

In i84g, some of her friends who knew her 
circumstances, and that she had refused a pen- 
sion, collected money to present her with a tes- 
timonal. ^1,400, thus obtained, was invested 
for her benefit in the Terminable Long Annui- 
ties, and a considerable sum besides was 
expended in a present of plate. The Ladies 
Lambton (the eldest of whom, as Countess of 
Elgin, was afterwards one of her warmest 
friends) went over to Tynemouth to use the 
plate with her for the first time, and " it was a 
testimonial fete." 

It was about this time, too, that the personal 
acquaintance, destined to become an intimate 
association in work, between Harriet Martineau 
and Florence Nightingale was commenced. 
Miss Martineau's younger sister Ellen had 
been governess in Miss Nightingale's family. 
Sick-nursing occupied Florence Nightingale's 
hands and heart long before the Crimean War 
made her famous, and Harriet Martineau was 
one of the sick to whom she ministered in 
those earlier days. 

Towards the end of 1843, Harriet's mind 
had accumulated a store of thoughts and feel- 
ings which imperatively pressed to be poured 
forth. She wrote then, in about six weeks, her 



FIVE YEARS OF ILLNESS. 163 

volume of essays, Life in the Sick-Room. The 
book was published under the pseudonym of 
"An Invalid," but was immediately attributed 
to her on all hands. It is a most interesting 
record of the high thoughts and feelings by 
which so melancholy an experience as years of 
suffering, of an apparently hopeless character, 
can be elevated, and made productive of bene- 
fit to the sufferer's own nature. Incidentally 
there is much wise counsel in the volume for 
those who have the care of invalids of this 
class. 

Amidst the many expressions of admiration 
and interest which this work drew forth, the 
following is perhaps most worthy of preserva- 
tion because of the source whence it came. 
Mr. Ouillinan, Wordsworth's son-in-law, wrote 
as follows to his friend, Henry Crabbe Robin- 
son, on December 9, 1843 • — ■ 

Mr. Wordsworth, Mrs. Wordsworth and Miss 
Fenwick have been quite charmed, affected, 
and instructed by the invalid's volume. . . . 
Mrs. Wordsworth, after a few pages were read, 
at once pronounced it to be Miss Martineau's 
production, and concluded that you knew all 
about it and caused it to be sent hither. In 
some of the most eloquent parts it stops short 
of their wishes and expectations : but they all 
agree that it is a rare book, doing hoi;ior to the 
head and heart of your able and interesting 



1 64 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

friend. Mr. Wordsworth praised it with more 
unreserve — I may say, with more earnestness 
— than is usual with him. The serene and 
heavenly-minded Miss Fenwick was prodigal 
of her admiration. But Mrs. Wordsworth's 
was the crowning praise. She said — and you 
know how she would say it — "I wish I had 
read exactly such a book as that years ago ! " 
... It is a genuine and touching series of 
meditations by an invalid not sick in mind or 
heart.* 

From one of the letters with which Mr. 
Henry G. Atkinson has favored me and my 
readers, I find that she wrote a chapter for that 
book, which undoubtedly must have been of 
the deepest interest, but which was not pub- 
lished. 

Letter to Mr. Atkinson. 
[Extract.] November 19, 1872. 

Dear Friend : 

. . . You will feel at once how earn- 
estly I must be longing for death — I who never 
loved life, and who would any day of my life 
have rather departed than stayed. Well ! it can 
hardly go on very much longer now. But I do 
wish it was permitted to us to judge for our- 
selves a little how long we ought to carry on 
the task which we never desired and could not 
refuse, and how soon we may fairly relieve our 
comrades from the burden of taking care of us. 

*Diaiy and Letters of H. C. Robinson, vol. iii., p. 235. 



FIVE YEARS OF ILLNESS. 1 65 

I wonder whether the chapter I wrote about 
this for the " Sick-Room" book will ever see the 
light. I rather wish it may, because I believe 
it utters what many people think and feel. I 
let it be omitted from that book because it 
might perhaps injure the impression of the rest 
of the volume ; but, so far as I remember it, it 
is worth considering, and therefore publishing. 

I have made such inquiries as I could (of one 
of Miss Martineau's executors and others), but 
can get no tidings of this missing chapter on 
Euthanasia. It was just such a subject — need- 
ing for its discussion, courage, calmness, com- 
mon sense, and logic, combined with sympathy, 
and a high standard of moral beauty and, good- 
ness — as she would have been sure to treat 
rarely well. There is one passage in Life in 
the Sick- Room, bearing upon the question ; she 
observes that the great reason why hopeless 
invalids so commonly endure on when they are 
longing for the rest of insensibility, is the un- 
certainty as to whether they may not find them- 
selves still conscious in another state. Her own 
history was to supply a stronger reason still 
against the irrevocable action being taken upon 
our rash assumptions that our work and our use- 
fulness in life are ended. As she truly observed : 
** No one knows when the spirits of m-en begin 
to work, or when they leave off, or whether they 



l66 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

work best when their bodies are weak, or when 
they are strong. Every human creature that 
has a spirit in him must therefore betaken care 
of, and kept alive as long as possible, that his 
spirit may do all it can in the world." So she 
wrote at that very time — showing how her mind 
was pondering every view of the subject. 

The sentence just quoted is from Dawn 
Island, a little one-hundred paged story which 
she wrote in the midst of her suffering, as her 
contribution to the funds of the Anti-Corn Law 
League. It was printed and sold for the benefit 
of that league, at the great bazaar of 1845. 

After the publication of the "Sick-Room". 
book, she commenced the writing of her autobi- 
ography — not as it was published afterwards, 
be it understood — for she was too ill to make 
much progress with it, and soon stopped writ- 
ing. But she neve}' became too ill to feel and 
to show a vivid interest in every cause that had 
the happiness and progress of mankind for its 
object. She kept up an extensive correspond- 
ence with those engaged in the world's work, 
and such personal efforts for public objects as 
those above mentioned she frequently exerted 
— sometimes over-exerted — herself to make. 
Her body was chained to two small rooms ; but 
her mind, with all its powers and affections, yet 
swept freely through the universe. No one 



MESMERIC RECOVERY. 1 6/ 

would have been more impatient than she her- 
self of any pretence that she lived incessantly 
on a high plane of lofty emotions, where pain 
ceased to be felt, or that her care for others was 
so extraordinary that self-regard was swallowed 
up in the depths of altruism. I have quoted her 
candid revelations about her sufferings and her 
opiates, to avoid the possibility of conveying an 
impression that she was thus guilty of hypocrisy 
or affectation. But the wide interests and the 
sympathies with mankind that were the solace 
of her sick life, and the inspiration of the work 
which she did so heavily, and yet so continu- 
ously, amidst her pain, assuredly shall be marked 
with the reverence that they merit. 

In 1844 the long illness came to an end. 
Harriet Martineau was restored to perfect 
health by means of mesmerism. Such a cure 
of such a person could not fail to make a great 
sensation. Not only had she a wide circle of 
personal acquaintances, but she had deeply im- 
pressed the public at large with a sense of her 
perfect sanity, her calm common-sense, and her 
practical wisdom, as well as with a conviction 
of her truthfulness and accuracy. Accordingly, 
as the Zoist (Dr. Elliotson's mesmeric periodi- 
cal) declared at the time : — 

The subject which the critic, a few months 
since, would not condescend to notice, has been 



1 68 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

elevated to a commanding position. It is the 
topic with which the daily papers and the weekly 
periodicals are filled ; in fact, all classes are 
moved by one common consent, and mesmerism, 
from the palace to the smallest town in the 
United Kingdom, is the scientific question ab- 
sorbing public attention. . . . The immediate 
cause of all this activity, is the publication of 
the case of Miss Martineau, who, after five years' 
incessant suffering and confinement to her 
couch, is now well. 

I have thought that what needs to be said 
here of the medical aspect and course of this 
period of suffering, and of the final cure, will 
best be said consecutively ; and, therefore, we 
will look back briefly over the five busy but 
suffering years, the work of which has now been 
recorded, and see what were the physical con- 
ditions under which that work was executed. 

Her health had been declining gradually from 
1834 to 1839; there was a slow but a marked 
deterioration in strength, and her spirits became 
depressed. In April of the latter year, when 
she undertook a continental journey the fatigue 
of travelling suddenly aggravated her condition ; 
and in Venice, early in June, she was compelled 
to consult a physician. Dr. Nardo. She was 
found to be suffering from a tumor, with enlarg- 
ment and displacement of an important organ, 
all this causing great internal pain, accompanied 



MESMERIC RECOVERY. 1 69 

by frequent weakening hemorrhages. She was 
carried back to England by easy stages, and lying 
on a couch, and reached Newcastle-on-Tyne at 
the end of July, 1839. She stayed for some 
time at the house in that town of her eldest 
sister, and then was removed only nine miles off, 
in order that her brother-in-law, Mr. T. M. 
Greenhow, F. R. C. S., might undertake the 
medical care of her case. Until October, she 
persevered in taking walking exercise ; but the 
pain, sickness and breathlessness which accom- 
panied this were so distressing, that soon after 
her removal to Tynemouth she ceased to go out 
of doors, or even to descend the stairs. 

Mr. Greenhow's prescriptions were confined 
at first to opiates, and other medicines to alle- 
viate symptoms. The opiates were not taken in 
excess — as, indeed, the books written in the 
period would conclusively prove. The patient's 
suffering was so great, however, that extreme 
recourse to such palliatives might have been 
forgiven. She could not raise the right leg; 
and could neither sit up for the faintness which 
then ensued, nor lie down with ease because of 
the pain in her back. " She could not sleep at 
night till she devised a plan of sleeping under a 
basket, for the purpose of keeping the weight 
of the bed-clothes from her ; and even then she 
was scared by horrors all night, and reduced by 



170 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

sickness during the day. This sickness in- 
creased to such a degree that for two years she 
was extremely low from want of food." 

At the end of two years, that is to say, in 
September, 1841, Sir Charles Clarke, M. D., 
was called in consultation ; and he prescribed 
iodine, remarking at the same time that, in his 
view, such a case as hers was practically incura- 
ble, and admitting that he *' had tried iodine in 
an infinite number of such cases, and never 
knew it avail." For the next three years Miss 
Martineau took three grains per diem of iodide 
of iron. It relieved the sickness ; but up to 
April, 1844 (two and a half years from the com- 
mencement of its administration), Mr. Green- 
how did not pretend that any improvement in 
the physical condition had taken place. In 
that month, as he afterwards said, he believed 
he found a slight change, "but he was not 
sure " ; and, if any, it was very trifling. The 
patient, on her part, was quite convinced that 
her state then was in no way altered. 

More than once different friends — amongst 
them Lord Lytton, Mr. Hallam, and the Basil 
Montagus — had urged her to try mesmerism ; 
but she had thought it due to her relative to 
give his orthodox medicines the fullest trial, 
before taking herself out of his hands in such a 
way. In June, 1844, however, Mr. Greenhow 



MESMERIC RECOVERY. 171 

himself suggested that she should be mesmer- 
ized. Of course, so advised, she consented to 
make the trial. A Mr. Hall, brought by Mr 
Greenhow, accordingly mesmerized her for the 
first time on June 22d, 1844, ^.nd again on the 
following day. 

The patient thought she experienced some 
relief, but did not feel quite sure. ''On occa- 
sion of a perfectly new experience, scepticism 
and self-distrust are strong."* The next day, 
however, set her doubts at rest. Mr. Hall was 
unable to come to her, and she asked her maid 
to make the passes in his stead. 

Within one minute, the twilight and phos- 
phoric lights appeared ; and in two or three 
more a delicious sensation of ease spread through 
me — a cool comfort, before which all pain and 
distress gave way, oozing out, as it were, at the 
soles of my feet. During that hour, and 
almost the whole evening, I could no more 
help exclaiming with pleasure than a person in 
torture crying out with pain. I became hungry, 
and ate with relish for the first time for five 
years. There was no heat, oppression, or sick- 
ness during the seance, nor any disorder after- 
wards. During the whole evening, instead of 
the lazy, hot ease of opiates, under which pain 
is felt to lie in wait, I experienced something of 
the indescribable sensations of health, which I 
had quite lost and forgotten. 

*This and the succeeding quotations are from her "Letters 
on Mesmerism," published in the Athenczum, 1845. 



172 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

Her dear friend during all the years that 
remained to her — Mr. Henry G. Atkinson f — 
had just come into her life. His interest in her 
case was enlisted by their mutual friend, Basil 
Montagus ; and Mr. Atkinson undertook to 
direct the mesmeric treatment by correspond- 
ence. Margaret, the maid, continued the mes- 
merism till September, and then Mr. Atkinson 
induced his friend Mrs. Montague Wynyard, the 
young widow of a clergyman, to undertake the 
case. "In pure zeal and benevolence this lady 
came to me, and has been with me ever since. 
When I found myself able to repose on the 
knowledge and power (mental and moral) of 
my mesmerist the last impediments to my 
progress were cleared away and I improved 
accordingly." 

t As this friendship had a profound influence upon Harriet's 
after thought and work, some description of Mr. Atkinson 
seems in place ; and I need offer that gentleman no apology 
for merely quoting what has appeared in print before about 
him. Margaret Fuller wrote thus of him in a private letter, in 
1846: — 

" Mr. Atkinson is a man about thirty, in the fullness of his 
powers, tall and finely formed, with a head for Leonardo to 
paint ; mild and composed, but powerful and sagacious; 
he does not think, but perceives and acts. He is intimate 
with artists, having studied architecture himself as a profession ; 
but has some fortune on which he lives. Sometimes stationary 
and acting in the affairs of other men ; sometimes wandering 
about the world and learning ; he seems bound by no tie, yet 
looks as if he had relatives in every place." — Memoirs of 
Margaret Fuller y by Emerson. 



MESMERIC RECOVERY. 1 73 

On December the 6th Mr, Greenhow found 
his patient quite well, and about to leave the 
place of her imprisonment, and start on a series 
of friendly visits. He declared, notwithstand- 
ing, that firstly, her physical condition was not 
essentially different from what it had been all 
through ; secondly, that the change in her sen- 
sations arose from the iodine suddenly and 
miraculously becoming more effective, and not 
from mesmerism. 

Such is the medical history, so interesting to 
all physiological students and to all sufferers of 
the same class, of Harriet Martineau's five 
years' illness and recovery. My business is 
simply to state facts, and I need not here 
undertake any dissertation upon mesmerism. 
It is sufficient to add that only those who are 
unaware of the profundity of our ignorance 
(up to the present day) about the action of the 
nervous system, and still more about what life 
really is, can be excused for rash jeering and 
hasty incredulity in such a case as this. 

Harriet Martineau knew that she was well 
again, and it seemed to her a clear duty to 
make as public as possible the history of how 
her recovery had been brought about. She 
did so by six letters to the Athenceitm ; and 
these were reprinted in pamphlet form. Mr. 
Greenhow was thereupon guilty of one of the 



174 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

most serious professional faults possible. He 
also published an account of The Case of Miss 
H. M., in a shilling pamphlet, giving the most 
minute and painful details of her illness, and 
respecting no confidence that had been reposed 
in his medical integrity. The result of this 
conduct on his part was that his patient felt 
herself compelled to break off all future inter- 
course with a man capable of such objection- 
able action. 

It may be added here that the cure was a 
permanent one.* She enjoyed ten years of 
health so good that she declared it taught her 
that in no previous period of her life had she 
ever been well. It may be as well to say that 
she never wavered in her assurance that her 
cure was worked by mesmerism, and that the 
cure was complete. All dispute about her firm 

* I find there is a widespread impression that she even- 
tually died of the same tumor that she supposed to have been 
cured at this time. It should be distinctly stated, however, 
that if this were the case, Mr. Greenhow and Sir C. Clarke 
w^ere both titterly wrong in their diagnosis in 1840. I have 
read Mr. Greenhow's Report of the Case of Miss H. M., and 
the notes of the post-mortem lie before me — kindly lent me 
by the surgeon, Mr. King, now of Bedford Park, who made 
the autopsy. I find that the organ which Mr. Greenhow and 
his consultant both stated to be the seat of the disease, enlarge- 
ment and tumor, in 1840, is described as being found " particu- 
larly small and unaffected " after death. 



MESMERIC RECOVERY. 1/5 

conviction on this point may be set at rest by 
the following" extracts from 

Letters to Mr. Atkinson. 
[Extract.] July 6, 1874. 

Notices of my mesmeric experience in ill- 
ness have revived an anxiety of mine about 
what may happen when I am gone, if certain 
parties should bring up the old falsehoods again, 
when I am not here to assert and prove the 
truth. I don't in the least suppose you can 
help me, any more than Mrs. Chapman, whom 
I have got to look over a box of papers of mine 
deposited with her. But I had rather tell you 
what is on my mind about it. 

I wrote, at Tynemouth, a diary of my case 
and experience under the mesmeric experiment 
(experiment desired and proposed by Mr. Green- 
how himself). He read it when finished, and so 
did several of my friends. There are two copies 
somewhere, for, not wishing to show certain 
passages, rather saucy, about the Greenhow 
prejudices and behavior, I accepted Mrs. 
Wynyard's kind offer to copy the MS., omit- 
ting those remarks. Now where are those 
MSS .-^ I cannot find them, nor say what I di1i 
with them, beyond having a dim notion that 
they (or at least Mrs. Wynyard's copy) were put 
away into some safe place, to await future 
chances. I perfectly remember the look of the 
packet, and the label on it, etc. When I 
remember what was said after reading it, by 
one of the wisest people I have known, I am 
shocked at our inability to find it. '' One must 



176 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

dispute anything being the cause of anything, 
if one disputes after reading this statement, 
that your recovery is due to mesmerism." And 
now, while I see false statements of the " facts," 
and false references circulating, as at present, 
I cannot find my own narrative, written from 
day to day, and do not know where to turn next ! 
If I had strength I would turn out all the 
papers in my possession, and make sure for my- 
self. Now, dear friend, do you think you ever 
saw that statement } 

[Extract.] September 18, 1874. 

My malady was absolutely unlike cancer, and 
it never had any sort of relation to *' malignant" 
disease. The doctors called it *' indolent tumor 
— most probably polypus." Don't you remem- 
ber how, at that very time, the great dispute on 
Elliotson's hands was whether any instance 
could be adduced of cure of organic disease by 
mesmerism ? Elliotson was nearly certain, but 
not quite, of the cure of a cancer case in his 
own practice. The doctors were full of the con- 
troversy, and some of them wrote both to me 
and to Mr. Greenhow to inquire the nature of 
my case, whether malignant or not. Of course 
we both replied "■ No." It would be a dreadful 
misfortune if now anybody concerned should 
tell a different story. Greenhow is still living 
(aged 82) and all alive ; and he would like 
nothing better than to get hold of it, and bring 
out another indecent pamphlet. If I could but 
lay hands on the diary of the case, written at the 
time, what a security it would be ? But I can 



MESMERIC RECOVERY. 1 7/ 

nowhere find it. Tlie next best security is 
turning back to the statement, ''Letters" in 
the Atheiiceum of the autumn of 1844. Those 
" Letters " went through two editions when 
reprinted, after having carried those numbers 
of the AthencBitm through three editions. One 
would think the narrative must be accessible 
enough. Above all things, let there be no mis- 
take in our statements. 

It ought to be enough for observers that I 
had ten years of robust health after that recov- 
ery, walking from sixteen to twenty miles in a 
day, on occasion, and riding a camel in the heart 
of Nubia, and hundreds of miles on horseback, 
through Palestine to Damascus, and back to the 
Levant. 

I have written so much because I could not 
help it. I shall hardly do it again. I will 
add only that the mesmerizing began in June, 
1844, and the cure was effected before the fol- 
lowing Christmas. 

Dear friend, 

I am yours ever, 

H. M. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE HOME LIFE. 



At forty-two years old, Harriet Martineau found 
herself free for the first time to form and take 
possession of a Jiome of her own. Now, for the 
first time, she could have the luxury which many 
girls obtain by marriage so young that they 
spoil it to themselves and others, and which it 
is as natural for each grown woman to desire, 
irrespective of marriage, as it is for a fledged 
bird to leave the old nest — a house and a 
domestic circle in which she could be the organ- 
izing spirit, where the home arrangements 
should be of her own ordering, and where she 
could have the privacy and self-management 
which can no otherwise be enjoyed, in combina- 
tion with the exercise of that housewifely skill 
to which all women more or less incline. 

The beauty of the scenery led her to fix upon 
the English lakes for the locality in which to 
make her home, and, finding no suitable house 
vacant, she resolved to build one for herself. 
She purchased two acres of land, within half -a- 



THE HOME LIFE. 1/9 

mile of the village of Ambleside ; borrowed 
some money on mortgage from a well-to-do 
cousin ; had the plans drawn out under her own 
instructions, and watched the house being built 
so that it should suit her own tastes. 

It is a pretty little gabled house, built of gray 
stone, and stands upon a small rocky eminence 
— whence its name "the Knoll." There is 
enough rock to hold the house, and to allow the 
formation of a terrace about twenty feet wide in 
front of the windows ; then there comes the 
descent of the face of the rock. At the foot of 
the rock is the garden. Narrow flights of steps 
at either end of the terrace lead down to the 
greensward and the flower-beds ; in the centre 
of these is a gray granite sun-dial, with the 
characteristic motto around it — ''Come Light! 
Visit me ! " To the left is the gardener's cot- 
tage, with the cow-house, pig-stye and root-shed. 
The front of the house looks across the garden, 
and over the valley to Loughrigg. Its back is 
turned to the road, and concealed from passers- 
by, partly by the growth of greenery, and partly 
by the Methodist Chapel. A winding path 
leads up from the road to the house, and a small 
path forking off from this goes round past the 
cottage to the field where the cows used to 
graze, and to the piece of land that was appro- 
priated to growing the roots for the cows and 
the household fruit and vegetables. 



l80 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

Within, "The Knoll " is just a nice little resi- 
dence for a maiden lady, with her small house- 
hold, and room for an occasional guest. You 
enter by a covered porch, and find the drawing- 
room on the right hand of the hall. It is a 
fairly large room, and remarkably well-lighted ; 
there was a window-tax when she built, but she 
showed her faith in the growth of political com- 
mon-sense abrogating so mischievous an impost, 
by building in anticipation of freedom of light 
and air from taxation. The drawing-room has 
two large windows, one of which descends quite 
to the floor, and is provided with two or three 
stone steps outside, so that the inmates may 
readily step forth on to the terrace. This win- 
dow, by the way, exposed her to another tax 
than the Government one. Hunters of celebri- 
ties were wont, in the tourist season, not merely 
to walk round her garden and terrace without 
leave, but even to mount these steps and flatten 
the tips of their noses against her window. 
Objectionable as the liability to this friendly 
attention would be felt by most of us, it was 
doubly so to Miss Martineau because of her 
deafness, which precluded her from receiving 
warning of her admirers' approaches from the 
crunching of their footsteps on the gravel^ — so 
that the first intimation that she would receive 
of their presence would be to turn her head by 



THE HOME LIFE. l8l 

chance and find the flattened nose and the peer- 
ing eyes against the window-pane. There is a 
special record of one occasion, when her bell 
rang in an agitated fashion, and the maid, on 
going, found her mistress much disturbed. 
" There is a big woman, with a big pattern on 
her dress, beckoning to me to come to the win- 
dow — go, and tell her to go away." But simi- 
lar incidents were manifold, and her servants 
had to be trained to guard their mistress as if 
she were the golden apples of the Hesperides. 
Indeed, for several years (till she became too ill 
to travel) she used to leave her lake-side home 
altogether during the tourist season. 

In her latest years she commonly wrote in the 
drawing-room, as the sunniest and most cheer- 
ful apartment, and where, too, she could sit by 
the fire, and yet get plenty of daylight. Her 
proper study, however was the room on the 
opposite side of the hall. This is a long room 
with a bay window at the other end of the fire- 
place, and the door in the centre. Book-cases 
lined the whole of these walls ; but her library 
was an extensive one, and there were books all 
over the house. This room served as dining- 
room and study, both ; the writing table was 
near the window, the dining-table further 
towards the fire. 

The only other room on the ground floor is 



1 82 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

the kitchen, which runs parallel with the draw- 
ing-room. Her principles and her practice went 
hand-in-hand in her domestic arrangements as 
in her life generally ; and her kitchen was as 
airy, light and comfortable for her maids as her 
drawing-room was for herself. The kitchen, 
too, was provided with a book-case for a servants' 
library. A scullery, dairy, etc., are annexed to 
the kitchen, and the entrance to the cellars 
below is also found through the green baize 
door which shuts off the cooking region from 
the front of the house. 

Up-stairs, that which was her own room is 
large and cheerful, and provided with two win- 
dows, a big hanging cupboard, and a good sized 
dressing-room — the latter indeed, fully large 
enough for a maid to sleep in. The next was 
the spare-room ; and there lingers no small in- 
terest about the guest-chamber, where Harriet 
Martineau received such guests as Charlotte 
Bronte, George Eliot, Emerson, and Douglas 
Jerrold. A small servants' room is next to this, 
and a larger one is over the kitchen, so that it 
comes just at the head of the stairs. Such is 
the size and arrangement of Harriet Martineau's 
home. 

Climbing plants soon covered "The Knoll" 
on every side. The ivy kept it green through 
all the year; the porch was embowered in 



THE HOME LIFE. 1 83 

honeysuckle, clematis, passion-flower, and Vir- 
ginia creeper. Wordsworth, Macready, and 
other friends of note, planted trees for Harriet 
below the terrace. The making of all these 
arrangements was a source of satisfaction and 
delight to her such as can only be imagined by 
those who have felt what it is to come abroad 
after a long and painful confinement from illness, 
and to find life and usefulness freely open again 
under agreeable conditions and prospects. 

While her house was being built, she lodged 
in Ambleside ; and in that time, during the 
autumn and winter of 1845-6, she wrote her 
Forest and Game Law Tales, with the object of 
showing how mischievous the game laws were 
in their operation upon society at large, and 
more particularly upon the fortunes of individ- 
ual farmers, and upon the laborers who were 
led into poaching. These tales occupy three 
volumes of the ordinary novel size. They had 
a sale which would have been very good for a 
novel ; two thousand copies were disposed of, 
and doubtless did some service for the cause for 
which she had worked. So far as her own 
pecuniary interests were concerned, however, 
these tales made her first failure. It was the 
only work which never returned her any remu- 
neration. The publisher had reckoned on a very 
large circulation, and so had put out too much 



1 84 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

capital in stock, stereotypes, and the like, to 
leave any profit on the sale that actually took 
place ; and the publication unfortunately coin- 
cided with the agitation of the political world 
about the repeal of the corn laws. But one 
pleasing incident arose out of them for her per- 
sonally. She had been in difficulties as to how 
to obtain turf to lay down upon the land under 
her terrace. One fine morning, soon after her 
entrance on her home, her maid found a 
great heap of sods under the window, when she 
opened the shutters in the morning. A dirty 
note, closed with a wafer, was stuck upon the 
pile, and this was found to state that the sods 
were " a token of gratitude for the Game Law 
Tales, from a Poacher." Harriet never dis- 
covered from whom this tribute came. 

She took possession of her home on April 
7th, 1846. During the summer she wrote 
another story for young people — one of her 
most interesting tales, and instructive in its 
moral bearing — The Billow aiid the Rock. It 
must here be noted, in passing, that this is the 
last of her works in which the theism that she 
had, up to this time, held for religious truth, 
makes itself visible. A new experience wa's 
about to lead her to think afresh upon the theo- 
logical subjects, and to revise her opinions 
about the genesis of faiths, and their influence 
upon morals* 



THE HOME LIFE. 1 85 

In the autumn of 1846, she accepted an 
invitation from her friends, Pvlr. and Mrs. R. V. 
Yates, of Liverpool, to join them in a journey 
to the East, they bearing the expense. The 
party left England in October, and were met 
at Malta by Mr. J. C. Ewart, afterwards M. P. 
for Liverpool. Together, these four travellers 
sailed up the Nile to the second cataract, studied 
Thebes and Philas, went up and into the Great 
Pyramid, visited bazaars, mosques and (the 
ladies) harems, in Cairo. Then they travelled 
in the track of Moses in the desert, passing 
Sinai and reaching Petra. Next, they com- 
pletely traversed Palestine ; and finally, passed 
through Syria to Beyrout, where they took ship 
again for home. This journey occupied eight 
months. 

In October, 1847, Harriet reached "The 
Knoll " again, and settled herself in her per- 
manent course of home life. As the same 
habits were continued, with only the interrup- 
tions of occasional visits to other parts of the 
country, day by day, for many years, I may as 
well mention what was the course of that daily 
home life. 

She rose very early : not infrequently, in the 
winter, before daylight ; and immediately set 
out for a good, long walk. Sometimes, I am 
told, she would appear at a farm-house, four 



r86 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

miles off, before the cows were milked. The 
old post-mistress recollects how, when she was 
making up her early letter-bags, in the gray of 
the morning mists, Miss Martineau would come 
down with her large bundle of correspondence, 
and never failed to have a pleasant nod and 
smile, or a few kindly inquiries, for her humble 
friend. ''I always go out before it is quite 
light," writes Miss Martineau to Mr. Atkinson, 
in November, 1 847 ; " and in the fine mornings I 
go up the hill behind the church — the Kirk- 
stone road — where I reach a great height, and 
see from half way along Windermere to Rydal. 
When the little shred of moon that is left and 
the morning star hang over Wansfell, among the 
amber clouds of the approaching sunrise, it is 
delicious. On the positively rainy mornings, my 
walk is to Pelter Bridge and back. Sometimes 
it is round the south end of the valley. These 
early walks (I sit down to my breakfast at half- 
past seven) are good, among other things, in 
preparing me in mind for my work." 

Returning home, she breakfasted at half-past 
seven ; filled her lamp ready for the evening, 
and arranged all household matters ; and by 
half-past eight was at her desk, where she 
worked undisturbed till two, the early dinner- 
time. These business hours were sacred, 
whether there were visitors in the house or 



THE HOME LIEE. 1 8/ 

not. After dinner, however, she devoted her- 
self to guests, if there were any ; if not, she 
took another walk, or in bad weather, did wool- 
work — "many a square yard of which," she 
says, she "all invisibly embossed with thoughts 
and feelings worked in." Tea and the news- 
paper came together, after which she either 
read, wrote letters, or conversed for the rest of 
the evening, ending her day always, whatever 
the weather, by a few moments of silent medi- 
tation in the porch or on the terrace without. 

She was not one of those mistresses who can- 
not talk to their servants, any more than she 
was one to indulge them in idle and familiar 
gossip. If there were any special news of the 
day, she would invite the maids into her sitting- 
room for half an hour in the evening, to tell 
them about it. During the Crimean War, and 
again during the American struggle, in partic- 
ular, the servants had the frequent privilege of 
tracing with her on the map the position of the 
battles, and learning with her aid to understand 
the great questions that were at stake. 

The servants thus trained and considered * 

* Henry Crabbe Robinson writes to Miss Fenwick on Jan- 
uary 15, 1849 • — 

" Miss Martineau makes herself an object of envy by the 
success of her domestic arrangements. . . , Mrs. Wordsworth 
declares she is a model in her household economy, making her 
servants happy, and setting an example of activity to her neigh- 
bors." 



1 88 HARRIET MARTINEA U. 

were not, certainly, common domestics. She 
kept two girls in the house, besides the laboring 
man and his wife at the cottage ; and, as the place 
was small, and her way of living simple, the work 
did not require that she should choose rough 
women for servants merely because of their 
strength. On the contrary, she made special 
efforts to secure young girls of a somewhat 
superior order, whom she might train and attach 
to herself. She got servants whom she had to 
dismiss now and again, of course ; but the time 
that most of her maids stopped with her and 
the warm feelings that they showed towards 
her, are a high testimony to the domestic charac- 
ter of their "strong minded" mistress. At the 
time of which we are now speaking, her maids 
were "Jane," who had been cured from chronic 
illness by Miss Martineau's mesmerizing, and 
who was in her service for seven years, when 
the girl emigrated ; and " Martha," who had 
been trained for teaching, and had to resign it 
from ill-health, but who later on married the 
master of Miss Carpenter's Bristol Ragged 
Schools, and returned to teaching, after serving 
Miss Martineau for some eight years. 

Of the servants who came after this, " Caro- 
line " was there twenty years, till she was 
removed by death ; and " Mary Anne " served 
Miss Martineau eleven years, till the mistress's 



THE HOME LIFE. 1 89 

death closed the long term of attendance and 
almost filial love. 

Indications of how different the relationship 
was in this home from what it only too often 
is, are found in many of Miss Martineau's let- 
ters. When "Martha" married, she had the 
rare honor of having Harriet Martineau and 
Mary Carpenter for her bridesmaids. The 
mistress gave the wedding breakfast, and par- 
took of it, too, in company with the bride and 
bridegroom and their friends; and when she 
had seen them all off, she sat down to write to 
her family about her loss " with a bursting 
heart." References to her feelings for her 
''dear friend, Caroline," will be seen presently 
in her letters to Mr. Atkinson ; and her care 
and affection for this valued servant are ex- 
pressed yet more frequently in letters which I 
may not quote, to more domestic friends. As 
to " Mary Anne," she has travelled a long way 
while in delicate health, to see me, to tell me 
all she could of her mistress, and to express 
how glad she was "to know of anything being 
done to make Miss Martineau's goodness better 
understood." "Mary Anne " is now a married 
woman. She was engaged for three or four 
years before Miss Martineau's death, but would 
not leave her mistress in her old age and her 
ill-health. That mistress, on her part, when 



190 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

told of the engagement, not only admitted the 
lover to an interview with herself, but even 
generously urged that the wedding should not 
be delayed for her sake, although at this time 
she had an almost morbid shrinking from stran- 
gers, and the loss of the personal attendant 
who knew her ways, would have been one of 
the greatest calamities of the commoner order 
that could have befallen her. But ''Mary 
Anne" did not leave her ; and when, at last, it 
became quite certain that death was at hand, 
the generous lady said to a relative that it 
made her " so glad to think that, when it was 
over, there could be nothing to stand in the 
way of Mary Anne's marriage." I have thus 
anticipated in order to show that the domestic 
peace which existed under her household rule 
was no special thing dependent upon the char- 
acter of a single servant, but was maintained 
through all the years of her home life, and 
therefore unquestionably was the result of the 
mistress's qualities of heart and mind. 

What may be called her external home-life — 
that is to say, what she was to her poorer 
neighbors — during that ten years of activity, 
may also be best noticed before the mental 
progress and literary work of the period come 
under further review. 

Every winter, for several years, she gave a 



THE HOME LIFE. I91 

course of lectures to the working-people and 
tradesfolk of the place, in the Methodist 
school-room at the back of her house. Man}^ 
of the gentry desired to attend, but she would 
have none of them, on the double ground that 
there was no room for them, and that the lec- 
tures were designed for people who had little 
access to books or other educational resources. 
The subjects that she treated were as various 
as those of her books, but all chosen with what 
I have previously observed seems to me to 
have been the object of all her works — to 
influence conduct through knowledge and rea- 
soning. There was a course on sanitary mat- 
ters, others on her travels (and we know from 
her books on the same topics from what point 
of view these were treated), some on the his- 
tory of England, another on the history and 
constitution of the United States ; and, finally, 
the last course for which she had health and 
strength was given in November and Decem- 
ber, 1854, and was on the Crimean War and 
the character of the government of Russia. 

I have seen some of the older inhabitants of 
Ambleside who attended these lectures, and 
who now speak of them in the warmest terms 
of admiration. " They were so clear ; and she 
never stopped for a word ; and so interesting ! 
— one could have listened to them over and 



192 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

over again." But there is no one who could tell, 
with the aid of a cultivated taste, what she was 
as a public speaker. So eloquent is some of 
her writing that one holds one's breath as one 
reads it ; and the evident rapidity of the pen- 
manship of her MS.* shows that such passages 
were produced with all the improvisatory im- 
pulse and flow of the orator. If, besides this, 
her delivery was fervent and impressive, one 
cannot but think how great a statesman and 
parliamentary leader she might have been, with 
these essential qualifications for modern public 
life added to all that knowledge, judgment, 
strength of principle, and political capacity 
which made men willing (as we shall see soon) 
to accept her as their political teacher in the 
daily and quarterly press. That she had the 
orator's stirring gifts, the personal magnetism 
which compels the minds of a mass to move 
with the words of a speaker, and the reciprocal 
power of receiving stimulus from an audience, 
when 

The hearts of many fires the lips of one, 

there is one shadowy incident left to show, 
besides the testimony of her local hearers who 

*In speaking of her eloquent writings I refer specially to 
the History of the Peace ; and I have seen the manuscript of 
this, bearing evidence that the hand could not keep pace with 
the flow of words and thoughts. 



THE HOME LIFE. 1 93 

survive. It is this: in 1849 Charlotte Bronte, 
then in the first flush of lier fame, sought 
Harriet Martineau's acquaintance, saying that 
she desired ''to see one whose works have so 
often made her the subject of my thoughts." 
In the following year Charlotte visited Harriet 
at ''The Knoll," and heard one of the English 
History lectures. Her bright eyes were fixed 
on the lecturer all through ; and as Harriet 
stood on her low platform, while the audience 
dispersed, she heard Charlotte say, in the very 
voice of the lecturer, what Edward said in the 
wind-mill at Cressy : "Is my son dead .-*" They 
walked silently to the house together — about 
three hundred paces — and when Harriet turned 
up her lamp in the drawing-room, the first thing 
she saw was Charlotte looking at her with wide, 
shining eyes, and repeating, in the same tone, 
" Is my son dead 1 " To those who know the 
dramatic quality of Charlotte Bronte's imagina- 
tion, there is a beam of light reflected from this 
trifling anecdote upon the force and the manner 
of the speaker who had so impressed her. 

The opinion which this keenly observant and 
candid woman formed of Harriet Martineau is 
of peculiar interest, and, as it specially refers 
to the period and the relations of which we are 
now treating, I quote it from Mrs. Gaskell's Life 
of Charlotte Bronte. It is given in some private 
7 



1 94 HARRIET MARTINEA U. 

letters, written from "The Knoll" (not, as Mrs. 
Chapman absurdly says, to Emily Bronte, who 
was dead, but) to Charlotte's life-long and most 
\ confidential friend, Miss Ellen Nussey : — 

*' I am at Miss Martineau's for a week. Her 
house is very pleasant both within and with- 
out ; arranged at all points with admirable neat- 
ness and comfort. Her visitors enjoy the most 
perfect liberty ; what she claims for herself she 
allows them. . . . She is a great and good woman. 
.... The manner in which she combines the 
highest mental culture with the nicest discharge 
of feminine duties filled me with admiration ; 
while her affectionate kindness earned my grati- 
tude. I think her good and noble qualities far 
outweigh her defects. It is my habit to consider 
the individual apart from his (or her) reputation, 
practice independent of theory, natural disposi- 
tion isolated from acquired opinion. Harriet 
Martineau's person, practice, and character in- 
spire me with the truest affection and respect. 

*' I find a worth and greatness in herself, and 
a consistency and benevolence and persever- 
ance in her practice, such as win the sincerest 
esteem and affection. She is not a person to be 
judged by her writings alone, but rather by her 
own deeds and life, than which nothing can be 
more exemplary or nobler. She seems to me the 
benefactress of Ambleside, yet takes no sort of 
credit to herself for her active and indefatigable 
philanthropy. The government of her house- 
hold is admirably administered ; all she does is 
well done, from the writing of a history down to 



THE HOME LIFE. 1 95 

the quietest feminine occupation. No sort of 
carelessness or neglect is allowed under her 
rule, and yet she is not over-strict, or too rigidly 
exacting ; her servants and her poor neighbors 
love as well as respect her. 

*' I must not, however, fall into the error of 
talking too much about her, merely because my 
mind is just now deeply impressed with what I 
have seen of her intellectual power and moral 
worth." 

Some of her lectures were given with the 
express object of inducing the people to form 
a building society. Rents were excessively 
high for the working classes from the scarcity 
of cottages ; and therefore they lived and 
slept crowded together, while the open country 
extended all around them. The moral screw 
was turned upon them, too, about politics and 
religion, by the threat of the landlord that, if 
they offended him, he would turn them out of 
the only cottages they could get. With that 
true philanthropy which her studies in political 
economy had taught, Miss Martineau went to 
work to aid the people to improve their own 
condition. She obtained a loan of ^500 from 
her old friend, Mrs. Reid, of London (to whom 
the foundation of Bedford college is mainly due), 
with which she purchased a field just above the 
village at Ellercross,and parcelled it out, drained 
it, and made the road. Then, by her lectures, 



196 HARRIET MARTINEAU 

she showed the people how they could *' buy a 
house with its rent" ; and she undertook all the 
infinite trouble that devolved upon her when the 
society was formed, as the only member of it 
with legal and general knowledge, and, there- 
fore, the only one able to guide its affairs. 
Before me there lies a package of the notes 
that she sent at different times on this business 
to Mr. Bell, the Ambleside chemist, who was 
the nominal chairman — though she was the real 
one — of the society. "Jealousy and ridicule 
went to work against the scheme"; but her 
philanthropic energy and wisdom were fully 
successful. The cottages are healthily planned 
and well built, and remain there as a monument 
to the efforts which she made for the good of 
her poor neighbors. 

Besides these more general undertakings for 
their benefit, there yet live many amongst them 
who are grateful to her for personal kindness 
and assistance. While her strength lasted, she 
was ever ready to try to relieve others from ill- 
ness by the means which she believed to have 
cured herself ; and seven mesmerized patients 
were sometimes asleep at one time in her 
drawing-room. She was a powerful mesmerist. 
Most of her patients were at least relieved — 
some cured. A present resident of Ambleside, 
who owes his success in business life to her 



THE HOME LIFE. 1 9/ 

kindness, told me how she mesmerized him for 
nearly an hour every day for a year ; and to 
show that she did not do this without very 
decided results to herself, he remembers that her 
fingers used to swell during the process, so as 
to almost hide her rings, if she forgot to take 
them off before beginning. 

Again, her library was placed freely at the 
service of deserving young men in the village, 
and only book-lovers will be able to appreciate 
the generosity of this neighborly kindness. 
Old Miss Nicholson tells me of Miss Martineau's 
kindness to her invalid sister ; sharing with her 
the luxuries which were not to be bought in 
Ambleside, but which the famous writer fre- 
quently received from some of her many friends. 
Nor was the mere personal human sympathy 
wanting in her ; those who needed no gifts or 
material aid from her knew her as a kind 
friend, ready to think for them and advise with 
them in their troubles or perplexities. 

In mentioning her activities other than liter- 
ary, during those ten busy and healthy years of 
home life, I must not omit her "farming" — 
her farm of two acres. She had no intention, 
at first, of embarking in such an enterprise. 
She let on hire that portion of her land which 
she did not wish to have in her garden, and her 
maids and herself, with the occasional help of 



198 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

a man, kept the garden in order. But this plan 
did not answer well. The tenant allowed the 
grass to get untidy, and his sheep broke into 
the garden to eat the cabbages. Neither the' 
vegetable nor the flower garden could be kept 
so nicely as might be wished. Milk, butter, 
eggs, and hams, all had to be bought at high 
prices ; and so small was the supply at times 
that these articles of country produce were 
actually unattainable by purchase. 

The energetic lady of the small domain was 
profoundly dissatisfied with this state of affairs. 
So to work she went to study the science of 
agriculture and practical farming ; and soon a 
Norfolk laborer was established on her land, 
and this small farm was under her own manage- 
ment. She set up a cross-pole fence around her 
estate, the first one ever seen in the Lake 
District ; and, like a true woman, she planted 
roses all along the fence, to wreathe and decorate 
it in summer. Then she initiated her fellow- 
farmers into the mysteries of high farming, and 
stall feeding. "■ A cow to three acres " was 
the Lake rule ; but she hired another half- 
acre of land, to add to her own, and showed 
that upon this total of two acres she could 
almost keep two cows. Fowls and pigs were, of 
course, kept also; and all the household com- 
forts which cows, hens, and pigs supply were 



THE HOME LIFE. 1 99 

obtained from her land at, practically, no cost 
at all. The subsistence of the laborer and his 
wife was created out of the soil ; and the house 
had a constant supply of vegetables, milk, eggs, 
and hams, at a less expense than buying had 
previously been, and with a much nicer and 
always certain supply. 

The experiment became famous in a small 
way. ** People came to see how we arranged 
our ground, so as to get such crops out of it," * 
and one of the Poor-Law Commissioners, having 
asked her for a private account of how she had 
managed her little farm, printed her letter in 
the Times, without asking her consent. This 
brought such a flood of correspondence on her 
that she was compelled to write on the subject 
for publication, and so the farm superintendence 
resulted in a piece of literary work for the mis- 
tress. 

Now we will see what her pen was doing 
while all these activities were helping to fill her 
days. 

* Health, Husbandry and Handicraft, p. 269, " Our Farm of 
Two Acres." 



CHAPTER IX. 

IN THE MATURITY OF HER POWERS. 

The book, published early in 1848, in which 
Harriet described her Egyptian, Desert and 
Palestine travels, was entitled Eastern Life, 
Past a7id Present. If I were required to give 
from some one only of her works a series 
of extracts which should illustrate the special 
powers of her mind and the finest features of her 
style, it would be this book that I should choose. 
I do not mean to say that the most eloquent and 
vivid passage that I might find in all her writ- 
ings is here ; nor that her deepest and noblest 
qualities as a thinker are more forcibly displayed 
here than elsewhere. But I mean that in 
Eastern Life, Past and Present, all her best 
moral and intellectual faculties were exerted, 
and their action becomes visible, at one page or 
another, in reading the book from the first to 
the last chapters. The keen observation, the 
active thought, the vigorous memory, the power 
of deep and sustained study, the mastery of 
language, giving the ability to depict in words 



MATURITY OF HER POWERS. 20I 

and to arouse the reader's imagination to men- 
tal vision — all these requisites for the writing 
of a good book of travel she showed that she 
possessed. But there is even more than all this 
in Eastern Life. There is the feeling for 
humanity in all its circumstances, which can 
sympathize no less with the slave of the harem 
at this moment alive in degradation, than with 
the highest intelligences that ceased from exist- 
ence unnumbered thousands of years ago. The 
most interesting and characteristic feature dis- 
tinguishing this work is, however, the openness 
and freedom of its thought combined with the 
profound reverence that it shows for all that is 
venerable. 

It was Eastern Life which first declared to 
the world that Harriet Martineau had ceased 
to have a theology. She had learned in travel- 
ling through Egypt, how much of what Moses 
taught was derived from the ancient mythology 
of Egypt. Passing afterwards through the 
lands where the Hebrew, the Christian, and 
the Mohammedan faiths in turn arose, observ- 
ing, thinking, and studying, the conclusion at 
which she arrived at last was, in brief, this : 
That men have ever constructed the image of a 
Ruler of the Universe out of their own minds ; 
that all successive ideas about the Supreme 
Power have been originated from within, and 



202 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

modified by the surrounding circumstances; 
and that all theologies, therefore, are baseless 
productions of the human imagination, and 
have no essential connection with those great 
religious ideas and emotions by which men are 
constrained to live nobly, to do justly, and to 
love what they see to be the true and the right. 
Her conviction that the highest moral con- 
duct, and the most unselfish goodness, and the 
noblest aspirations, are in no degree connected 
with any kind of creed, was aided, and sup- 
ported, no doubt, by her warm personal affec- 
tion for Mr. Atkinson, and some other of her 
friends of his way of thinking, in whom she 
found aspirations as lofty and feelings as admi- 
rable as ever she had enjoyed communion with, 
together with a complete rejection, on scien- 
tific grounds, of all theology. Her belief now 
was that — 

The best state of mind was to be found, how- 
ever it might be accounted for, in those who 
were called philosophical atheists. ... I knew 
several of that class — some avowed, and some 
not ; and I had for several years felt that they 
were among my most honored acquaintances 
and friends ; and now I knew them more deeply 
and thoroughly, I must say that, for conscien- 
tousness, sincerity, integrity, seriousness, effec- 
tive intellect, and the true religious spirit^ I 
knew nothing like them. 



MATURITY OF HER POWERS. 203 

Her own "true religious" earnestness was 
unabated. Eastern Life contains abundance of 
evidence that the spirit in which she now wrote 
against all theological systems was exactly at 
one with that in which she had twenty years 
before written Addresses, Prayers and Hymns. 
Her intellectual range had become far wider; 
her knowledge of human nature and of the 
history and conditions of mankind had vastly 
increased ; but her religious earnestness — that 
is to say, her devotion to truth, and her emo- 
tional reverence for her highest conceptions of 
goodness and duty — was as fervent as ever. 

Notwithstanding the boldness and hetero- 
doxy of Eastern Life, it did not cause much 
outcry ; and her two next books were amongst 
the most successful of all her works. The first 
of these was HoiiseJwld Education ; the second, 
A History of the TJm'ty Years' Peace. 

The former was partly written for periodical 
publication during 1847 in the People s Journal, 
for which magazine she wrote also a few desul- 
tory articles. 

The History of the Peace was a voluminous 
work of the first order of importance. Its 
execution is in most respects entirely admira- 
ble. Her task of writing the history of the 
time in which she had herself lived was one of 
extreme delicacy. Honest contemporary judg 



204 ' HARRIET MART/NEAU. 



ments about still-living or lately-dead persons, 
and about actions which have been observed 
vi^ith all the freshness of feeling of the passing 
moment, must often seem unduly stern to those 
who look back through the softening veil of 
the past, and to whom the actors have always 
been purely historic personages. Moreover, I 
have before mentioned her tendency, which 
seems to me to have arisen from her deafness, 
to give insufficient shading off in depicting 
character. But wonderfully little allowance is, 
after all, required on such grounds from the 
reader at the present day of Harriet Marti- 
neau's history of the years between 1815 and 
1845. The view taken by her of O'Connell, 
Brougham, and some others is perhaps too 
stern ; the picture has too many dark shades, 
and not a due proportion of light tints ; but it 
can scarcely be questioned that the outline is 
accurate, and the whole drawing substantially 
correct. The earnest endeavor after imparti- 
ality, and the success with which the judicial 
attitude of the historian is on the whole main- 
tained, are very remarkable. 

This appears so to one who looks upon the 
book with the eyes of the present generation ; 
but the recognition of the fact at the moment 
when she wrote is perhaps more conclusive, and 
the following quotation may serve to show the 



n 



MATURITY OF HER POWERS. 205 

opinion of those who (with her) had lived 
through the time of which she treats. 

Miss Martineau has been able to discuss 
events which may almost be called contemporary 
as calmly as if she were examining a remote 
period of antiquity. She has written the his- 
tory of a rather undignified reign with a dignity 
that raises even the strifes of forgotten and 
exploded parties into philosophic importance. 
She exhibits warm sympathies for all that is 
noble, honorable, or exhalted — and a thorough 
disdain of every paltry contrivance devised to 
serve a temporary purpose, or gain an unworthy 
end. The principles which she enunciates are 
based on eternal truths, and evolved with a 
logical precision that admits rhetorical ornament 
without becoming obscure or confused. There 
are few living authors who may be so implicitly 
trusted with the task of writing contemporary 
history as Miss Martineau. She has spared no 
pains in investigating the truth, and allowed no 
fears to prevent her from stating it.* 

Though all her other books should die, and 
be buried utterly under the dust of time, this 
one will never be entirely lost. It is as accurate 
and as careful in its facts as the driest compen- 
dium, while yet its pages glow with eloquence, 
and are instinct with political wisdom. She 
really did here what she had designed to do in 
Society in America ; but here she did it in the 

''^Athenasum, March, 31st, 1849. 



20b HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

right method, there in a wrong one. The great 
growth of her mind in twelve years of maturity 
could not be better gauged than by a compari- 
son of these two works. Her political principles 
did not change in the time ; she was a true 
believer in popular government all her life — 
her love of justice caused her to be a hater of 
class rule, and of every kind of privilege ; her 
sympathies were boundless, and made her in 
earnest for the freedom and progress of the 
democracy ; her conscience was active so that 
she loved truth for its own sake ; and her sense 
of duty never failed to keep alive in her large 
mind a feeling of personal concern in the pro- 
gress of public affairs. All this was true of her 
when she wrote her American book ; it was 
equally true when she treated the history of her 
own land and her "own times. But in the latter 
case, she writes on political philosophy like a 
statesman — in the former there is much of the 
doctrinaire. In the latter work, principles 
underlie the whole fabric ; but the actions of 
politicians are made the means of judging their 
own professed creeds, the value of those creeds 
being easily appraised by the results seen to 
follow on actions in conformity with them. In 
the earlier work, as we saw, the theories were 
postulated first, and the actions were measured 
against those self-derived standards of right and 



MATURITY OF HER POWERS. 20J 

wrong. For political sagacity, for nobility of 
public spirit, for effective thought, for knowl- 
edge of facts, for clear presentation of them, 
for accuracy in judging of their permanent 
importance, for candor, and impartiality, for 
insight into character, and for vivid and glowing 
eloquence, The History of the Thirty Years 
Peace stands forth unmatched amongst books 
of its class. This, I take it, will be the 
most enduring and valuable of all her works, 
and the one by which chiefly posterity will learn 
what were her powers and how estimable was 
her character. 

In the two works last mentioned, Eastern 
Life and The Thirty Years' Peace, it seems to 
me that she touched the high-water mark of 
her permanent achievements. We have nearly 
reached the end of the long catalogue of her 
books, though by no means the end of her 
writings. Very much more work she did in 
her life, as will presently be told, but it was 
that kind of work which is (with the single 
exception of oratory) the most powerful at the 
moment, but the most evanescent — journalism. 
She was soon to begin to apply her ripe wis- 
dom and her life-long study of the theory 
of government to the concrete problems of 
practical politics. The influence of an active 
and powerful journalist cannot be measured; 



208 HARRIET MARTINEAU, 

the work itself cannot be adequately surveyed 
and criticized ; and thus what is, perhaps, the 
most useful, capable and important work which 
Harriet Martineau did, eludes our detailed 
survey. We can best judge what was her 
power as a leader-writer and review and maga- 
zine essayist by noting how progressively her 
mind improved, and to what a high moral and 
intellectual standpoint she had attained in her 
latest volumes, just before she exchanged such 
sustained labors for the briefer though not less 
arduous efforts of leading and teaching through 
the periodical press. 

The History of the Peace was completed in 
1850, and was so immediately successful that 
the publisher asked Miss Martineau to write 
an introductory volume on the history of the 
first fifteen years of this century. While at 
work upon this "Introduction" she did also 
some short articles on various subjects for 
Charles Dickens' periodical, HotiseJiold Words, 
and was likewise proceeding with the prepara- 
tion of another volume of a very different 
kind. This last was published in January, 
1 85 1 (before the introductory volume of the//2>- 
tory), under the title of Letters on the Laws of 
Maris Nature and Development, by Henry George 
Atkinson, F. G. S., and Harriet Martineau. 

The contents of the book were actual letters 



MATURITY OF HER POWERS. 209 

which had passed between the friends. It will 
be remembered that Harriet did not meet Mr. 
Atkinson during the progress of her mesmeric 
treatment and recovery from illness under his 
written advice. But soon after she got better, 
they were visiting together at the house of a 
cousin of hers, and during the six years or so 
which had since then passed, they had often 
met, and their correspondence had grown to 
be very frequent. Mr. Atkinson had gradually 
become the friend dearest to Harriet Martineau 
in all the world. He gained her affection (I 
use the word advisedly) by entirely honorable 
roads — by the delight which she took in 
observing his scientific knowledge, his original- 
ity of thought and his elevated tone of mind. 
But I cannot doubt that long before this vol- 
ume of Letters w^as published, he had become 
dear to her by virtue of that personal attraction 
which is not altogether dependent upon merit, 
but which enhances such merits as may be 
possessed by the object of the attachment, and 
somewhat confuses the relationship on the 
intellectual side. This condition of things is 
in no way especially feminine ; John Stuart 
Mill bowed down to Mrs. Taylor, and Comte 
erected his admiration of Clotilde into a ciilte. 
Mr. Atkinson was many years younger than 
his friend, and very likely she never fully real- 



2IO HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

ized the depth of her own feehngs towards him. 
But still the attraction had its influence, though 
unacknowledged in words, and unreciprocated 
in kind. 

Miss Martineau was really taught by Mr. 
Atkinson much of science that she had not pre- 
viously studied ; but yet it was an error, from 
every point of view, for her to present to the 
world a book in which she avowed herself his 
pupil. Her letters are mainly composed of 
questions, upon which she seeks enlightenment. 
The answers cannot, in the nature of the case, 
give forth a connected system of thought upon 
''Man's Nature and Development." No one 
was more ready than she herself to recognize 
that, as she says, "in literature, no mind can 
work well upon the lines laid down by 
another" ; yet this was what she required Mr. 
Atkinson to do in replying to her questions and 
taking up her points. The errors that one 
would expect are found in the results of this 
mistaken form ; the facts and the inferences 
are neither sufficiently separated, nor properly 
connected ; and the real value which the book 
had as a contribution to science and philoso- 
phy is lost sight of in the disorder. In fact, no 
form could be less suitable than the epistolary 
for such work — either for the writers to arrange 
and analyze what they were doing, or for the 



MATURITY OF HER POWERS. 211 

reader to see and understand what they have 
done. Besides this, the public had long con- 
sented to learn from Harriet Martineau ; but 
Mr. Atkinson, though highly respected by his 
own circle, was not known to the general public, 
and it was therefore an error in policy for Miss 
Martineau to show herself sitting as a pupil at 
his feet, and to call on those who believed in 
her to believe in him as her teacher and guide. 
Her fine tact and long experience must have 
led her to perceive all this in an ordinary case ; 
and only the personal reason of a desire to win 
for her friend the recognition from the public 
which she herself had already given him so fully 
in her own head and heart, could have led an 
experienced and able woman of letters to so 
blunder in her selection of the literary form of 
the book. 

As to the substance of the Letters, but little 
need be said, because the bulk of the volume is 
not her writing, but Mr. Atkinson's. The 
ideas which she had then accepted, however, 
were those by which she lived the rest of her 
life, and must have their due share of notice for 
that reason. 

The fundamental point in the book is its 
insistance on the Baconian, or experiential, or 
scientific, method of inquiry being adopted in 
studying man and his mental constitution, just 



212 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

as much as in studying inanimate nature. A 
great First Cause of all things is not denied, but 
declared unknown and unknowable, as neces- 
sarily beyond the comprehension of the senses 
of man. Supernatural revelation is, of course, 
entirely rejected ; indeed, the very word super- 
natural is held to involve a fallacy, for only nat- 
ural things can be known. Mr. Atkinson 
pointed out that the whole of the facts* which 
are around us can be observed, analyzed, and 
found to occur in an invariable sequence of 
causes and effects, which form natural laws ; 
and that the mind of man is 'no exception to 
this general truth, that all events spring from 
causes, and are themselves in turn causes of 
other effects. It follows from these conclusions 
that the "First Cause" (which, as Miss Mar- 
tineau said, the constitution of the human mind 
requires it to suppose) never intervenes in the 
world as an errant influence, disturbing natural 
law ; and all speculations about its nature, char- 
acter, and purposes are put aside as out of the 
field of inquiry. 

Passing on from method to results, Mr. Atkin- 
son gave the first hints of many doctrines now 
fully accepted : as that of unconscious cerebra- 
tion, or that of more senses than five, for in- 
stance ; and many others (based mainly on 
phrenology and mesmerism) not held, up to the 



MATURITY OF HER POWERS. 213 

present time, even by the scientists of his own 
school. For the rest the book has much that is 
interesting; it has much that is true; but it 
has, also, much that might well have been put 
forward as speculation, but should not have been 
stated so dogmatically as it was on the evidence 
available.* 

It was received in 185 1 with a howl from the 
orthodox press which would seem strange indeed 
in these days. But of competent criticism it had 
very little. Miss Martineau's name, of course, 
secured attention for it ; and small though her 
share in the book was, it was quite enough to 
make the fact perfectly clear that she was hence- 
forth to be looked upon as a "materialist" and 
a "philosophical atheist," and the rest of the 
names by which it was customary to stigmatize 
any person who rejected supernaturalism and 
revelation. 

The motives with which this book was written 
and published could hardly be misunderstood. 
There could be no idea of making money out of 

* It is right that I should say that I alone am responsible for 
the above (necessarily imperfect) digest of the contents of the 
book. I at first thought of asking Mr. Atkinson to do me the 
favor of reading my account of his work in proof; but I ulti- 
mately concluded that it would be better that in this instance, 
as in the case of all Harriet Martineau's other books, I myself 
should be wholly responsible to the public for my own sub- 
stantial accuracy and fairness. 



214 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

a work on philosophy — even if either of the 
authors had been in the habit of writing merely 
to make money; while as to fame and applause, 
everyone is more or less acquainted with the 
history of the reception given in all ages to 
those who have questioned the popular beliefs 
of their time ! The sole motive with which 
Harriet Martineau wrote and issued this book 
was the same that impelled her to do all her 
work — the desire to teach that which she 
believed to be true, and to be valuable in its 
influence upon conduct. With regard to the 
latter point, it seemed to her that one great 
cause for the slow advance of civilization is the 
degree to which good men and women have 
occupied themselves with supernatural concerns, 
neglecting for these the actual world, its condi- 
tions, and its wants, and giving themselves over 
to the, guidance of a spiritual hierarchy instead 
of exercising all their own powers in freedom. 
She struck at this error in publishing the 
Letters. At the same time she felt doubtful if 
her future writings would ever be read after her 
bold utterances, and even, as the following letter 
shows, whether she might not find herself the 
occupant of a felon's dock for the crime of which 
Socrates, and Jesus, and Galileo were each in 
turn accused — blasphemy : 



MATURITY OF HER POWERS. 215 

Letter to Mr. Atkinson. 
[Extract,] August 10, 1874. 

One thing more is worth saying. Do you 
remember how, when we were bringing out our 
" Letters," I directed your attention to our 
Blasphemy Law, and the trial of Moxon, under 
that law, for pubHshing Shelley's "Queen Mab " 
among his Poems? You ridiculed my state- 
ment, and said Mr. Procter * denied there being 
such a law, or Moxon having been tried, in the 
face of the fact that I had corresponded with 
Moxon on the occasion, on the part of certain 
personal friends. The fact appeared afterwards 
in the Annual Register^ but it seemed to pro- 
duce no effect. Well, now you can know the 
truth by looking at the Life of Dennian, by Sir 
Joseph Arnould. If you can lay your hands on 
the book, please look at vol. ii. p. 129, where 
there is an account of the trial, Judge Denman 
being the judge who tried the case. The narra- 
tive ends thus: — ''The verdict was for the 
Crown " (conviction for blasphemy), "■ but Mr. 
Moxon was never called up for sentence." It is 
too late for Mr. Procter to learn the truth, but 
it is surely always well for us, while still engaged 
in the work of life, to be accurately informed on 
such matters as the laws we live under, and our 
consequent responsibilities. Is it not so } 

It was, then, with the full anticipation, not 
only of social obloquy, but also of legal penalty, 
that the brave thinker fulfilled (to quote her own 

* "Barry Cornwall." 



2l6 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

words in the preface to the Letters) "that great 
social duty, to impart what we beheve, and what 
we think we have learned. Among the few 
things of which we can pronounce ourselves 
certain is the obligation of inquirers after truth 
to communicate what they obtain." The heroic 
soul fulfilled now, as before and afterwards, 
what she held to be her duty, as simply and 
unwaveringly as ever a soldier on the battle- 
field charged the cannon's mouth. 

Five times in her life did Harriet Martineau 
write and publish that which she believed would 
ruin her prospects, silence her voice for ever, 
and close her career. Far from her was that 
common paltering with the conscience by which 
so many men confuse their minds — the poor 
pretence that truth must not be spoken for fear 
that the speaker's influence for future worthy 
work may be injured by his boldness. This is 
how the devil tempts, saying, "■ Fall down, and 
worship me, and I will give thee all the king- 
doms of the earth and the glory of them." 
Harriet Martineau never worshipped evil even 
by silence, when silence was sin, playing fast 
and loose with her conscience by a promise to 
use the power so obtained for higher objects 
hereafter. The truth that appeared to her mind 
she spoke frankly ; the work that was placed 
for her to do she did simply ; and so the quag- 



MATURITY OF HER POWERS. 21 y 

mire of the expedient never engulfed her repu- 
tation, her self-respect and her usefulness, as it 
has done that of so many who have been lured 
into it from the straight path of right action 
and truthful speech in public life, by will-o'-the- 
wisp hopes of greater power and glory for 
themselves in the future — which they hope 
they may use for good when they shall be 
smothered in cowardice and lies. She had 
much to suffer, and did suffer. Martyrs are 
not honored because they are insensate, but 
because they defy their natural human weak- 
nesses in maintaining that which they believe 
to be true. Probably the keenest grief which 
she experienced on the occasion now before us 
came from the complete separation which took 
place between her and the dearest friend of her 
youth, her brother James. Dr. Martineau was, 
at that time, one of the editors of the Prospect- 
ive Review. Philosophy was his department, 
and in the natural order the Letters came to 
him for review. He reviewed the book accord- 
ingly and in such terms that all intercourse 
between him and his sister was thenceforward 
at an end. They had long before drifted apart 
in thought ; but this final separation was none 
the less felt as a wrench. Dr. Martineau's 
attack was almost exclusively aimed against Mr. 
Atkinson. But with Harriet's loyalty of nature 



2l8 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

she was more impelled to resent what was said 
about her friend and colleague than if it had 
been directed against herself. The brother and 
sister never met or communicated with each 
other again. 

The introductory volume of the History of 
the Peace ^2,^ published soon after the Atkin- 
son Letters. The next work which she under- 
took was a great labor — the rendering into 
English of Comte's Positive PJiilosophy. 

What she accomplished with this book was 
not a mere translation, nor could it be precisely 
described as a condensation ; it was both these 
and more. Comte had propounded his ground- 
work of philosophy and his outline of all the 
sciences in six bulky volumics, full of repeti- 
tions, and written in an imperfect French style. 
Harriet Martineau rendered the whole sub- 
stance of these six volumes into two of clear 
English, orderly, consecutive, and scientific in 
method as in substance. So well was her work 
accomplished that Comte himself adopted it 
for his students' use, removing from his list of 
books for Positivists his own edition of his 
course, and recommending instead the English 
version by Miss Martineau. It thus by-and- 
bye came to pass that Comte's own work fell 
entirely out of use, and his complete teachings 
became inaccessible to the French people in 



MATURITY OF HER POWERS. 219 

their own tongue ; so that twenty years after- 
wards, when one of his disciples wished to call 
public attention to the master's work as teach- 
ing the method of social science by which the 
French nation must find its way back to pros- 
perity after the great war, he was constrained 
to ask Harriet Martineau's permission to re- 
translate her version. 

Comte wrote her the warmest expressions of 
his gratitude ; but this he owed her on another 
ground besides the one of the value of her 
labors in popularizing his work so ably. While 
she was laboring at her task, Mr. Lombe, then 
High Sheriff of Norfolk, sent her a cheque for 
^£500, which he begged her to accept, since she 
was doing a work which he had long desired to 
see accomplished, but which he knew could not 
possibly be remunerative to her. She accepted 
the money, but with her customary generosity 
in pecuniary affairs, she employed more than 
half of it in paying the whole expenses of pub- 
lication, and arranged that the proceeds of the 
sale, whatever they might be, should be shared 
with M. Comte. 

There was a considerable demand for the 
work on its first appearance ; and up to this 
present date a fair number of copies is annu- 
ally disposed of. It came out in November, 
1853, having partly occupied her time during 



220 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

the preceding two years. Only partly, how- 
ever; for, besides all the efforts for her neigh- 
borhood previously referred to (the building 
society was in progress during those years, and 
gave her much thought, as her business notes 
are in evidence), and besides her farming, she 
was now writing largely for periodicals and 
newspapers. These are the pulpits from which 
our modern preachers are most widely and 
effectively heard, and the right tone of which 
is, therefore, of the first consequence to society. 
For every hundred persons who listen to the 
priest, the journalist (including in this term 
writers for all periodicals) speaks to a thou- 
sand ; and while the words of the one are often 
heard merely as a formality, those of the other, 
dealing with the matters at the moment most 
near and interesting to his audience, may effec- 
tively influence the thoughts and consciences 
and actions of thousands in the near future. 
Shallow, indeed, would be the mind which 
undervalued the power of the journalist, or 
underrated the seriousness of his vocation. 

Harriet Martineau saw the scope which 
journalism afforded for the kind of work which 
she had all her life been doing — the influencing 
of conduct by considering practical affairs in 
the light of principle. Her periodical writing 
being, according to our mistaken English cus- 



MATURITY OF HER POWERS. 221 

torn, anonymous, neither brought her any 
increase of fame nor carried with it the influence 
which her personahty as a teacher would have 
contributed to the weight of what she wrote. 
Nevertheless, she repeatedly in her letters, 
speaks of her journalism as the most delightful 
work of her life, and that which she believed 
had been perhaps the most useful of all her 
efforts. 

Some stories with sanitary morals, which she 
now contributed to HoitseJiold Words, were 
admirably written. " The People of Bleaburn " 
is the true story of what was done by a grand 
American woman, Mary Ware, when she hap- 
pened to go into an isolated village at the very 
time that half its inhabitants were lying stricken 
down by an epidemic. "Woodruffe, the Gar- 
dener," was a presentation of the evils of living 
in low-lying damp countries. " The Marsh Fog 
and the Sea Breeze " is perhaps the most 
interesting of all her stories since the Political 
Economy tales, which it much resembles in 
lightness of touch and in practical utility. 

A series of slight stories under the general 
title of "Sketches from Life," was also contrib- 
uted at this time to the Leader ; they were all 
of them true tales and, like most real life stories, 
extremely pathetic. The most touching is one 
called "The Old Governess," describing the 



222 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

feelings with which an educated elderly woman, 
past her work, and with an injured hand, sought 
refuge in the workhouse; and how she con- 
ducted herself there. These stories were re- 
published in a volume in 1856. 

A series of descriptive accounts of manu- 
factures, some of which contain most graphic 
writing, were also done in this time. These 
papers, with others written between 1845-55, 
were re-published in a volume in 1861.* There 
are some passages which I am greatly tempted 
to quote, merely as specimens of the perfection 
to which her literary style had at this time 
arrived. It is now a style of that clear sim- 
plicity which seems so easy to the reader, but 
which is in reality the highest triumph of the 
literary artist. The inexperienced reader is apt 
to suppose that anybody could write thus, until 
perhaps he gains some glimpse of the truth by 
finding the powerful effect which it is producing 
upon his thoughts and imagination. The 
practiced writer knows meanwhile that, simple 
though the vocabulary appears, he could not 
change a word for the better ; and easily though 
the sentences swing, the rounding of their 
rhythm is an achievement to admire. I may 
not pause to quote, but I may especially refer to 
the paper on "The Life of a Salmon," in illus- 
tration of this eloquence of style. 

''^Healthy Husbandry and Handicraft. 



MATURITY OF HER POWERS. 223 

Early in 1852, Harriet Martineau received an 
invitation from the Daily Nezvs to send a 
" leader " occasionally. Busily engaged as she 
was with Comte, and with work for other 
periodicals, she yet gladly accepted this propo- 
sition ; and thus began her connection with 
that paper (then newly started) which was so 
valuable both to her and the proprietors of the 
Daily News. During the early summer of 1852, 
she wrote two " leaders " each week, and, before 
she had finished Comte, the regular contributions 
to the newspaper had grown to three a week. 

In the autumn of 1852 she made a two 
months' tour through Ireland; and at the 
request of the editor she wrote thence a 
descriptive letter for publication in the Daily 
News, almost every other day. The letters 
described the state of Ireland at the moment, 
with observations such as few were so well 
qualified as she to make upon the facts. She 
did now what Daniel O'Connell had entreated 
her to do years before. In 1839 the Liberator 
begged her to travel through his country, and 
without bias or favor represent calmly what 
really was the political and social condition 
of Ireland.* The "Letters from Ireland" 

* It may be mentioned that a similar plea was made to her 
by the Crown Prince Oscar of Sweden, who desired her aid 
in preparing his people for constitutional reform ; and again, 



224 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

attracted immediate attention as they appeared 
in the Daily News ; and before the end of the 
year they were re-published in a volume. At 
the same time some of her "leaders" secured 
much attention, and the editor pressed her to 
write even more frequently. During 1853 she 
wrote on an average four articles a week, and 
shortly afterwards the number rose to six — one 
in each day's paper. 

The tale of the journalistic work of these 
busy two years is not yet complete. There is 
a long article of hers in the Weshninster Review 
for January, 1853; the subject is, '^The Con- 
dition and Prospects of Ireland." 

All this journalism was done at the same time 
that the heavy sustained task of the condensa- 
tion of Comte's abstruse and bulky work was 
proceeding. When to all this we add in our 
recollection her home duties, and when the fact 
is borne in mind that it was her common prac- 
tice to take immense walks, not infrequently 
covering from twelve to fifteen miles in the day, 
it will be seen that the mere industry and 
energy that she showed were most extraordi- 
nary. But, besides this, her work was of a 
high order of literary excellence, and full of 
intellectual power. 

at a later date, by Count Porro, of Milan, who begged that 
she would let the world know what was the condition of Italy 
under Austrian rule. 



MATURITY OF HER POWERS. 225 

Such incessant labor is not to be held up as 
altogether an example to be imitated. There 
are some few whose- duty it is to consciously 
moderate the amount of labor to which their 
mental activity impels them ; and no one ought 
to allow the imperative brain to overtax the 
rest of the system. During the Irish journey, 
Harriet began to be aware of experiencing 
unusual fatigue. She gave herself no sufficient 
pause, however, either then or afterwards, until 
she could not help doing so. 

After the publication of Comte she wrote a 
remarkable article for the Westminster Review 
(anonymous of course) on " England's Foreign 
policy." This appeared in the number for 
January, 1854. It dealt largely with the im- 
pending struggle between England and Russia. 
True Liberal as Harriet Martineau was, she 
hated with all her soul, not the Russian people, 
but the hideous despotism, the Asiatic and 
barbarian and brutal government of that empire. 
She foresaw a probable great struggle in the 
future between tyranny and freedom, in which 
Russia, by virtue of all her circumstances, will 
be the power against which the free peoples of 
the earth will have to fight. Not only, then, 
did she fully recognize the necessity for the 
immediate resistance, which the Crimean war 
was, to the encroachments on Europe of the 
8 



226 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

Czar, but her article also included a powerful 
plea for the abolition of that system of secrecy 
of English diplomacy, by which it is rendered 
quite possible for our ministry to covertly injure 
our liberties, and to take action behind our 
backs in our names in opposition to our warm- 
est wishes. The article, as a whole, is one of 
her most powerful pieces of writing, and had 
it been delivered as a speech in parliament, 
it would undoubtedly have produced a great 
effect, and have placed her high amongst the 
statesmen of that critical time. 

In the April {1854) number of the same 
Review y there appeared an article from her pen 
upon *'The Census of 1851." This paper was 
not a mere comment upon the census return, 
but an historical review of the progress of 
the English people from barbarism to the civili- 
zation of our century. 

In the spring of this year she made a careful 
survey of the beautiful district around her 
home, in order to write a Complete Guide to the 
Lakes for a local publisher. She was already 
thoroughly acquainted with the neighborhood 
by means of her long and frequent pedestrian 
excursions, and reminiscences of these abound 
in this ''Guide." The vivid description of a 
storm on Blake Fell, for instance, is a faithful 
account of an occurrence during a visit which 



MATURITY OF HER POWERS. 227 

a niece and nephew from Birmingham paid to 
her soon after her settlement at the lakes. 
The word-paintings of the scenery, too, were 
drawn, not from what she saw on one set visit 
only, but were the results of her many and 
frequent pilgrimages to those beauties of nature 
which she so highly appreciated. But still she 
would not write her "Guide" without revisiting 
the whole of the district. 

The most interesting point about this book 
is that it reveals one feature of her character 
that all who knew her mention, but that very 
rarely appears in her writings. This is, her 
keen sense of humor. She dearly loved a good 
story, and could tell one herself with pith and 
point. Her laugh is said to have been very 
hearty and ready. Even when she was old and 
ill, she was always amusable, and her laughter 
at any little bit of fun would even then ring 
through her house as gaily as though the out- 
burst had been that of a child's frank merri- 
ment. It is surprising that this sense of and 
enjoyment in the ludicrous so rarely appears 
in her writings. But I think it was because 
her authorship was to her too serious a vocation 
for fun to come into it often. She felt it 
almost as the exercise of a priestly function. 
It was earnest and almost solemn work for her 
to write what might be multiplied through the 



228 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 



n 



printing-press many thousand times over, and 
so uttered to all who had ears to hear. She 
showed that this was so by the greater deliber- 
ateness with which she expressed judgments of 
persons and pronounced opinions of any kind 
in her writings than in conversation. Similarly 
she showed it by the abeyance of her humor 
in writing; it was no more possible for her to 
crack jokes when seated at her desk than it 
would have been for a priestess when standing 
by her tripod. But this particular book, this 
''Guide, written for neighborly reasons," did 
not admit of the seriousness of her intellect 
being called into action, and the result is that 
it is full of good stories and lighted up with 
fun. Her enjoyment in such stories reveals 
that sense of humor which, however strongly 
visible in daily intercourse, rarely appears in 
her books in any other form than in her perfect 
appreciation of the line between the sublime 
and the ludicrous. 

This summer brought her much annoyance of 
a pecuniary kind. Her generosity about money 
matters were repeatedly shown, from the time 
when she left her '^Illustrations''' in the hands 
of Mr. C. Fox, onwards ; and she had now given 
what was for her means an extravagant contribu- 
tion to the maintenance of the Westminster 
Review^ taking a mortgage on the proprietorship 



MATURITY OF HER POWERS. 229 

for her only security. In the summer of 1854, 
Dr. Chapman, its publisher and editor, failed; 
and an attempt was made to upset the mortgage. 
Harriet Martineau gave Chapman the most 
kindly assistance and sympathy in his affairs at 
this juncture ; not only overlooking the probable 
loss to herself, but exerting herself to write two 
long articles for the next number of the Review 
(October, 1854). 

One of these essays is on "Rajah Brooke;" 
a name that has half faded out of the knowledge 
of the present generation, but which well de- 
serves memory from the heroic devotedness, 
and courage, and governing faculty of the man. 
His qualities were those most congenial to 
Harriet Martineau; and, finding his enemies 
active and potent, she made a complete study 
of his case and represented it in fall in an 
article which (like her previous one on " Foreign 
Policy") was so statesman-like and so wise, 
so calm and yet so eloquent, that it would have 
made her famous amongst the politicians of 
the day had it been delivered as a speech in the 
House, instead of being printed anonymously 
in a review with too small a circulation to pay 
its way. 

Nor did generous aid to Dr. Chapman end 
here. He was disappointed of some expected 
contributions, and Miss Martineau wrote him a 



230 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

second long article for the same number — the 
one on ''The Crystal Palace," which concludes 
the Westminster for October, 1854. Her two 
contributions amounted to fifty-four pages of 
print — truly a generous gift to an impecunious 
magazine editor. 

It was now precisely ten years since her 
recovery from her long illness. The work done 
in that time shows how complete the recovery 
had been. Those ten happy years of vigor and 
of labor were, she was wont to say, Mr. Atkin- 
son's gift to her. Well had she used these last 
years of her strength. 



1 



CHAPTER X. 

IN RETREAT ; JOURNALISM. 

Miss Martineau's health failed towards the end 
of 1854 ; and early in 1855, symptoms of a dis- 
organized circulation became so serious that she 
went up to London to consult physicians. Dr. 
Latham and Sir Thomas Watson both came to 
the conclusion that she was suffering from 
enlargement and enfeeblement of the heart ; 
and, in accordance with her wish to hear a can- 
did statement of her case, they told her that 
her life would probably not be much prolonged. 
In short they gave her to understand that she 
was dying ; and her own sensations confirmed 
the impression. She had frequent sinking 
fits ; and every night when she lay down, a 
struggle for breath began, which lasted some- 
times for hours. She received her death sen- 
tence then, and began a course of lif^ as trying 
to the nerves and as searching a test of char- 
acter as could well be imagined. That trial she 
bore nobly for twenty-one long suffering years. 
She was carefully carried home, and at once 



232 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

occupied herself with making every preparation 
for the departure from earth which she supposed 
to be impending. The first business was to 
make a new will ; and this was a characteristic 
document. After ordering that her funeral 
should be conducted in the plainest manner, and 
at the least possible cost, she continued thus : — 
'' It is my desire, from an interest in the pro- 
gress of scientific investigation, that my skull 
should be given to Henry George Atkinson, of 
Upper Gloucester Place, and also my brain, if 
my death take place within such distance of 
the said Henry George Atkinson's then present 
abode as to enable him to have it for purposes 
of scientific investigation." Her property was 
then ordered to bear various small charges, 
including one of ^200 to Mrs. Chapman for 
writing a conclusion to the testator's auto- 
biography, over and above a fourth share of 
the profits on the sale of the whole work after 
the first edition." " The Knoll " was bequeathed 
to her favorite ''little sister," Ellen. The 
remainder of her possessions were divided 
amongst all her brothers and sisters, or their 
heirs, with as much impartiality as though she 
held, with Maggie Tulliver's aunt Glegg, that 
" in the matter of wills, personal qualities were 
subordinate to the great fundamental fact of 
blood." Although mesmerism had estranged 



IN RETREAT; JOURNALISM. 233 

her from a sister, and theology from a brother, 
she made no display of bitter feelings towards 
them and theirs in her last will. 

All her personal affairs being made as orderly 
as possible, she proceeded to write her Autobi- 
ography. Readers of that interesting but mis- 
leading work must bear in mind that it was a 
very hasty production. The two large volumes 
were written in a few months; the MS. was 
sent to the printer as it was produced, the sheets 
for the first edition were printed off, then the 
matter was stereotyped, and the sheets and 
plates were packed up in the office of the 
printer, duly insured, and held ready for imme- 
diate publication after her death. She wrote 
in this hot haste with *'the shadow cloaked 
from head to foot " at her right hand. So 
much reason had she to believe that her very 
days were numbered, that she wrote the latter 
part of her Autobiography before the first por- 
tion. She had already given forth, in House- 
hold EdiLcation and TJie Crofton Boys, the results 
of her childish experiences of life ; and she was 
now specially anxious not to die without leaving 
behind her a definite account of the later course 
of her intellectual history. 

No one who knew her considers that she did 
herself justice in \h.Q Autobiography. It is hard 
and censorious ; it displays vanity, both in its 



234 HARRIET MARTINEAU, 

depreciation of her own work, and in its recital 
of the petty slights and insults which had been 
offered to her from time to time ; it is aggres- 
sive, as though replying to enemies rather than 
appealing to friends ; and no one of either the 
finer or the softer qualities of her nature is at 
all adequately indicated. It is, in short, the 
least worthy of her true self of all the writings 
of her life. 

The reasons of this unfortunate fact was not 
far to seek. Her rationalism, and the abuse 
and moral ill-usage which she had incurred by 
her avowal of her anti-theological opinions, were 
still new to her. Her very thoughts, replacing 
as they did the ideas which she held without 
examination for some twenty years (the time 
which intervened between her devotional writ- 
ings and her Eastern Life) were still so far new 
that they had not the unconsciousness and the 
quiet placidity which habit alone gives ; for new 
ideas, like new clothes, sit uneasily, and are 
noticeable to their wearer, however carefully 
they may have been fitted before adoption. 
Again, the announcement in the press that 
her illness was fatal revived the discussion of 
her infidelity, and brought down upon her a 
whole avalanche of signed and anonymous let- 
ters, of little tracts, awe-inspiring hymns, and 
manuals of divinity. The letters were contro- 



IN RETREAT; JOURNALISM, 235 

versial, admonishing, minatory, or entreating; 
but whatever their character they were all 
agreed upon one point, viz., that her unbelief in 
Christianity was a frightful sin, of which she 
had been willfully guilty. They all agreed in 
supposing that it was within her own volition to 
resume her previous faith, and that she would 
not only go to eternal perdition if she did not 
put on again her old beliefs, but that she would 
richly deserve to do so for her willful wickedness. 
Thus, as Miss Arnold remarked to me, the 
moment at which she wrote the Autobiography 
was the most aggressive and unpleasant of her 
whole life. Conscious as she was of the purity 
of her motives in uttering her philosophical 
opinions, she found herself suddenly spoken to 
by a multitude, whom she could not but know 
were mentally and morally incapable of judging 
her, as a sinner, worthy of their pity and repro- 
bation. Knowing that she had long been rec- 
ognized as a teacher, in advance of the mass of 
society in knowledge and power of thought, here 
was a crowd of people talking to her in the 
tones which they might have adopted towards 
some ignorant inmate of a prison. What won- 
der that her wounded self-esteem seemed for a 
little while to pass into vanity, when she had to 
remind the world, from which such insults were 
pouring in, of all that she had done for its 



236 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

instruction in the past ? What wonder that the 
strength which was summed up to bear with 
fortitude this species of modern martyrdom, 
seemed to give a tone of coldness and hardness 
to writing of so personal a kind ? Then the 
extreme haste with which the writing and print- 
ing were done gave no time for the subsidence 
of such painful impressions ; and great physi- 
cal suffering and weakness, together with the 
powerful depressing medicines which were being 
employed, added to the difficulty of writing with 
calmness, and with a full possession of the suf- 
ferer's whole nature. In short, an autobiogra- 
phy could not have been written under less 
favorable conditions. All things taken into 
account, it is no wonder that those who knew 
and loved her whole personality were shocked 
and amazed at the inadequate presentation given 
of it in those volumes. The sensitive, unselfish, 
loving, domestic woman, and the just, careful, 
disinterested, conscientious and logical author, 
were alike obscured rather than revealed ; and 
the biographer whom she chose to complete the 
work had neither the intimate personal knowl- 
edge, the mental faculty which might have sup- 
plied its place, nor the literary skill requisite to 
present a truer picture. 

Her AictobiograpLy completed, the plates 
engraved, and all publishing arrangements 



IN RETREAT; JOURNALISM. 237 

made, she might, had she been an ordinary 
invaUd, have settled down into quiet after so 
hard-working a life. Harriet Martineau could 
not do this. Her labors continued uninterrupt- 
edly, and were pursued to the utmost limit 
which her illness would allow. She did not 
cease (except during the few months that the 
Autobiography was in hand) writing her "lead- 
ers " for the Daily News. Every week it con- 
tained articles by her, instructing thousands of 
readers. Yet she was very ill. She never left 
her home again, after that journey to London 
early in 1855. Sometimes she was well enough 
to go out upon her terrace ; and she frequently 
sat in her porch, which was a bower, in the 
summer time, of clematis, honeysuckle, and 
passion-flowers, intermingled with ivy ; but she 
could do no more. She was given, as soon as 
she became ill, the daughterly care of her 
niece, Maria, the daughter of her elder brother, 
Robert Martineau, of Birmingham ; and no 
mother ever received tenderer care or more 
valuable assistance from her own child than 
Harriet Martineau did from the sensible and 
affectionate girl whose life was thenceforth 
devoted to her service. Maria once tried if 
her aunt could be taken out of her own grounds 
in a bath-chair ; but before they reached the 
gates a fainting fit came on, with such appalling 



238 HARRIET MARTINEAU, 

symptoms of stoppage of the heart that the 
experiment was never repeated. Sometimes 
Miss Martineau would be well enough to see 
visitors ; more frequently, however, those whom 
she would most have liked to talk with had to 
be sent away by the doctor's orders. But, 
through it all, her work continued. 

Soon after the Autobiography was finished, 
she wrote a long paper upon a most important 
subject, and one which she felt to be a source 
of the gravest anxiety for the future of English 
politics — the true sphere of State interference 
with daily life. The common ignorance and 
carelessness upon this point she believed to be 
the most painful and perilous feature of our 
present situation. 

It has been brought to light by beneficent 
action which is, in another view, altogether 
encouraging. Our benevolence towards the 
helpless, and our interest in personal morality, 
have grown into a sort of public pursuit ; and 
they have taken such a hold on us that we may 
fairly hope that the wretched and the wronged 
will never more be thrust out of sight. But, 
in the pursuit of our new objects, we have 
fallen back — far further than 1688 — in the 
principle of our legislative proposals — under- 
taking to provide by law against personal vices, 
and certain special social contracts. 



IN RETREAT; JOURNALISM. 239 

Her devotion to freedom, and her belief in 
personal liberty, led her to write an article on 
" Meddlesome Legislation " for the Westminster 
Review. 

Her pecuniary sacrifices for the Review had 
been made because she looked upon it as an 
organ for free speech. Her feelings may be 
imagined when the editor refused to insert this 
article, not on any ground of principle, but 
merely because it spoke too freely of some of 
the advocates of meddlesome factory laws. 
,^The essay was published however, as a pam- 
phlet, and had such influence upon a bill then 
before Parliment that the Association of Factory 
Occupiers requested to be allowed to signalize 
their appreciation of it by giving one hundred 
guineas in her name to a charity. A somewhat 
similar piece of work followed in the next year, 
a rather lengthy pamphlet On Corporate Tradi- 
tions and National Rights. She offered nothing 
more to the Westminster ReviezUy however, for 
some time; not, indeed, until that subject in 
which she took so profound an interest, the wel- 
fare of the United States, and the progress of 
the anti-slavery cause, seemed to require of 
her that she should avail herself of every pos- 
sible means of addressing the public upon it. 
Then, in 1857, she wrote an article on The 
Manifest Destiny of^the American Union^ which 



240 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

appeared in the Westmiiister for July of that 
year. 

Having thus signalized her forgiveness of 
that Review, she went on writing again for it 
for a little while. In the October number of 
the same year there was a paper by her on 
Female Dress in 1857. Crinoline had then 
lately been introduced by the Empress of the 
French. If one good, rousing argument could 
have stood in the path of fashion, this amusing 
and vigorous paper from Harriet Martineau's 
sick-room might have answered the purpose. 
But, alas ! crinoline flourished; and five whole 
years later on was still so enormous that she 
took up her parable against it once more, in 
Once a Week, as the cause of "willful murder." 

About this time she determined to assume 
the preiix of "Mrs." "There were so many 
Misses Martineau," she said ; and, besides, she 
felt the absurdity of a woman of mature years 
bearing only the same complimentary title as is 
accorded to a little girl in short frocks at school. 
Her cards and the envelopes of her friends bore 
thenceforward the inscription, " Mrs. Harriet 
Martineau." 

Although she continued to write, contributing 
almost every day to the Daily News, as well as 
to these larger periodicals, she was, it must be 
remembered, an invalid. Her health fluctuated 



IN RETREAT; JOURNALISM. 241 

from day to day ; but it may as well be expli- 
citly stated that she was more or less ill during 
the whole of the rest of her life. She suffered a 
considerable amount daily of actual pain, which 
was partly the consequence of the medicines pre- 
scribed for her, and partly the result of the dis- 
placement of the internal organs arising, as her 
doctors led her to suppose, from the enlargement 
of the heart ; but in reality, as was afterwards 
discovered, from the growth of a tumor. Her 
most constant afflictions were the difficulty of 
breathing, dizziness, and dimness of sight, 
resulting from disturbed circulation. At irreg- 
ular, but not infrequent, intervals she was seized 
with fainting-fits, in which her heart appeared 
to entirely cease beating for a minute or two ; 
and it was not certain from day to day but that 
she might die in one of these attacks. 

Not only did she continue her work under 
these conditions, but her interest in her poor 
neighbors remained unabated. There is more 
than one man now living in Ambleside who 
traces a part of his prosperity to the interest 
which she from her sick-room displayed in his 
progress. A photograph of her, still sold in 
Ambleside, was taken in her own drawing-room 
by a young beginner whom she allowed thus to 
benefit himself. He and several others were 
given free access to her library. A sickly 



242 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

young woman in the village was made a regular 
sharer in the good things — the wine, the turtle 
soup, the game and the flowers — which devo- 
ted friends sent frequently to cheer Harriet 
Martineau's retirement. Every Christmas, 
there was a party of the oldest inhabitants of 
Ambleside invited to spend a long day in the 
kitchen of the " Knoll." The residents in her 
own cottages looked upon her less as a land- 
lady than as a friend to whom to send in every 
difficulty. 

Nor did she cease to do whatever was possi- 
ble to her in the local public life. The ques- 
tion of Church Rates was approaching a crisis 
when she was taken ill ; and when the Amble- 
side Quakers resolved to organize resistance to 
payment of these rates, they found Harriet 
Martineau ready to help. The householders 
who refused to pay were summoned before the 
local bench; and it was Harriet Martineau 
whom the justices selected to be distrained 
upon ; but events marched rapidly, and the dis- 
traint was not made. 

The next article that she contributed to the 
Westminster Review appeared in the July (1858) 
number, and, under the title of The Last Days 
of Chmxh Rates, gave an account of the efforts 
by which Non-conformists in all parts of the 
country were rendering this impost impossible. 



IN RETREAT; JOURNALISM. 243 

In October, 1858, there was another long 
article in the Westminstei% entitled Travel dur- 
ing the Last Half -Century. She was now, how- 
ever, growing tired of wasting her work in that 
quarter, and, as we shall presently see, she 
sought a- more influential and appreciative 
medium for her longer communications with 
the public. 

Subjects which could be treated briefly were 
always taken up as *' leaders " for the Daily 
Neivs. Lengthier topics, too, were occasion- 
ally dealt with in those columns in the form of 
serial articles. One set of papers on The 
Endozved Schools of Ireland; were contributed 
in this manner, in 1857, to the Daily News, 
and afterwards reprinted in a small volume. 
In that same year occurred the terrible Indian 
crisis which compelled the people of this coun- 
try to give, for a time, the attention which they 
so begrudge to their great dependency. Miss 
Martineau then wrote a series of articles, under 
the title of The History of British Rule in 
India, for the Daily News, and this most useful 
work was immediately re-published in a volume. 
Alas ! even she could not make so involved and 
distant a story interesting ; but her book was 
clear and vivid, and whenever it dealt with the 
practical problem of the moment, it was full of 
wisdom and conscientiousness. This volume 



244 HARRIET MARTINEAU, 



^J' 



was immediately followed by Suggestions 
towards the Future Government of India. The 
preface of the first is dated October, 1857 ; 
and that of the second, January, 1858. The 
key-note of these books is a plea for the gov- 
ernment of India according to Indian ideas ; 
and, as a natural consequence, its government 
with the assistance of its natives. Courage as 
well as insight were required at that particular 
moment of popular passion to put forward 
these calm, statesman-like ideas. The wisdom 
and the practical value of the books cannot be 
shown by extracts ; but one paragraph may be 
given as a faint indication of the tone : *' If 
instead of attempting to hold India as a pre- 
serve of English destinies, a nursery of British 
fortunes, we throw it open with the aim of 
developing India for the Indians, by means of 
British knowledge and equity, we shall find our 
own highest advantage, political and material, 
and may possibly recognize brethren and com- 
rades at length, where we have hitherto per- 
ceived only savages, innocents, or foes."* Such 
was the spirit to which the Daily News, under 
Harriet Martineau's hand, led the people at a 
moment of great political excitement. The 
amplest testimony to the practical wisdom of 
the suggestions that she made was borne by 

*Future Government of India ^ p. 94. 



IN RETREAT; JOURNALISM. 245 

those Anglo-Indians who were qualified to 
judge. 

In June, 1858, she wrote the first letter, which 
lies before me, to her relative, Mr. Henry Reeve, 
the editor of the Edinht.rgh Review. In this, 
after telling him that she never before has 
offered or wished to write for that Review^ 
because in politics she had generally disagreed 
with it (to her, it may be remarked in passing, 
Toryism was less odious than official Whigism), 
she says that she has now a subject in view 
which she thinks would be suitable for the pages 
of the good old Whig organ. Before entering 
into details, she begs him to tell her frankly if 
any article will be refused merely because it 
comes from her. She adds that her health is so 
sunk and her life so precarious, that all her 
engagements have to be made with an explan- 
ation of the chances against their fulfillment ; 
still she does write a good deal, and with higher 
success than in her younger days. 

Mr. Reeve replied cordially inviting her con- 
tributions, and the result was the establishment 
both of an intimate correspondence with him, 
and of a relationship with the Review under 
his charge, which lasted until she could write 
no more. 

The particular subject which she offered Mr. 
Reeve at first did not seem to him a suitable 



246 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

one. The title of it was to have been Fj^ench 
Invasion Panics ; but as Mr. Reeve did not like 
the idea, the paper was not written. But for 
the Edinburgh of April, 1859, she wrote a long- 
article on Female Indnstryy which attracted 
much attention. Its purpose was to show how 
greatly the conditions of women's lives are 
altered in this century from what they were of 
old. "A very large proportion of the women 
of England earn their own bread ; and there is 
no saying how much good may be done by a 
timely recognition of this simple truth. A 
social organization framed for a community of 
which half stayed at home while the other half 
went out to work, cannot answer the purposes 
of a society of which a quarter remains at home 
while three-quarters go out to work.H^ After 
considering in detail, with equal benevolence 
and wisdom, the condition of the various classes 
of women workers — those employed in agricul- 
ture, mines, fishing, domestic service, needle- 
work, and shop-keeping, and suggesting, in 
passing, the schools of cookery which have since 
become established facts, the article concludes : 
*' The tale is plain enough. So far from our 
countrywomen being all maintained as a matter 
of fact by us, the * bread-winners,' three millions 
out of six of adult English women work for 
subsistence, and two out of the three in 



IN RETREAT; JOURNALISM. 247 

independence. With this new condition of 
affairs new duties and new views must be 
adopted. Old obstructions must be removed ; 
and the aim must be set before us, as a nation 
as well as in private life, to provide for the free 
development and full use of the powers of every 
member of the community;" It scarcely needs 
to be pointed out that here she went quietly but 
surely to the foundation of that whole class of 
new claims and demands on behalf of the 
women of our modern world, of which she was 
so valuable an advocate, and for the granting of 
which her life was so excellent a plea. In these 
few sentences she at one time displayed the 
character of the changes required, and the 
reasons why it is now necessary, as it did not 
use to be, that women should be completely 
enfranchised, industrially and otherwise. 

The year 1859 was a very busy one. Besides 
the long article just mentioned, she published 
in April of that year quite a large volume on 
England and her Soldiers. The book was written 
to aid the work which her beloved friend. Flor- 
ence Nightingale, had in hand for the benefit of 
the army. It was, in effect, a popularization of 
all that had come out before the Royal Com- 
mission on the sanitary condition of the army ; 
with the additional advantage of the views and 
opinions of Florence Nightingale, studied at 



248 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

first hand. One of the most beautiful features 
of the book is the hearty and generous delight 
with which the one illustrious lady recounts the 
efforts, the sacrifices, and the triumphs of the 
other. 

In 1859, also, Mrs. Martineau began to write 
frequent letters for publication to the American 
Anti-Slavery Standard. The affairs of the Re- 
public were plainly approaching a crisis ; and 
those in America who knew how well-informed 
she was on the politics of both countries, and 
on political principles, were anxious to have the 
guidance that only she could give in the difficult 
time that was approaching. During the three 
years, 1859 ^^ 1861, she sent over ninety long 
articles for publication in America. 

An article on Trades Unions^ denouncing the 
tyranny of men in fustian coats sitting round a 
beer-shop table, as to the full as mischievous as 
that of crowned and titled despots, appeared in 
the Edinburgh Review for October, 1859. ^^ 
the July (i860) issue of the same Review she 
wrote on Russia, and in October of that year 
on The American Union. 

Besides these large undertakings, she was 
writing during these years almost weekly arti- 
cles, on one topic or another, for the illustrated 
periodical Once a Week ; whilst the Daily News 
"leaders" continued without intermission dur- 



IN RETREAT; JOURNALISM. 249 

ing the whole time. As regards these latter, I 
shall presently mention when she entirely ceased 
to write ; but in the meanwhile I do not attempt 
to follow them in detail. Nothing that I could 
say would give any adequate impression of their 
quality. That maybe sufficiently judged by the 
fact that the newspaper in which they were 
issued was one of the best of the great London 
dailies; and that, during her time, it touched 
the highest point of influence and circulation, 
as the organ of no clique, but the consistent 
advocate of high principles, and just, consistent, 
sound (not mere ''Liberal Party") political 
action. As to the subjects of the Daily News 
articles, they range over the whole field of 
public interests, excepting only those ''hot and 
hot " topics which had to be treated immediately 
that fresh news about them reached London. 
Those who were with Mrs. Martineau tell me 
that the only difficulty with her was to choose 
what subject she would treat each day, out of 
the many that offered. She kept up an exten- 
sive correspondence, and read continually; and 
her fertile mind, highly cultivated as it was 
by her life-long studies, had some original and 
valuable contribution to make upon the vast 
variety of the topics of which each day brought 
suggestions 

The marvel that a sick lady, shut up in her 



250 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

house in a remote village, could thus keep touch 
with and take an active part in all the interests 
and movements of the great world, increases 
the more it is considered. The very corres- 
pondence by which she was aided in knowing 
and feeling what the public mind was stirred 
about, was in itself a heavy labor, and a great 
tax upon such feeble strength as she possessed. 
The letters with which Mr. Reeve has favored 
me give glimpses of how ideas and calls came 
to her sometimes. Here is a graphic account, 
for instance, of a man riding up with a telegram 
from Miss Nightingale — ''Agitate! agitate ! for 
Lord de Grey in place of Sir G. Cornewall 
Lewis" — which gives the first intimation in 
Ambleside that the post of War Minister is 
vacant. The newspaper arrives later, and 
Lewis' death is learned; so a ''leader" is 
written early next morning, to catch the coach, 
and appears in the following morning's Daily 
News. Presently Lord de Grey is appointed, 
and then the two women friends rejoice to- 
gether in the chance of getting army reforms 
made by a minister who, they hope, will not be 
a slave to royal influences. Another time she 
tells Mr. Reeve how she is treating the Rever- 
sio7i of My sore in the Daily News, on the sugges- 
tion of a man learned in Indian affairs ; and 
again, that she is reviewing a book of Eastern 



IN RETREAT; JOURNALISM. 25 I 

travel at the request of a friend. In fine, there 
were constant letters seekmg to engage her 
interest and aid in-every description of reforms, 
and for all kinds of movements in public affairs. 

But with all the wide circle of suggesting cor- 
respondents, the wonder of the prolific mind 
working so actively from the Ambleside hermit- 
age remains untouched. Perhaps I cannot 
better show how much she did, and how wide a 
range she covered, in Daily News " leaders," 
than by giving a list of the articles of a single 
year. I take 1861, really at random. It was 
simply the page at which the office ledger hap- 
pened to be open before me. 

Here are the subjects of her Daily News 
"leaders " in 1861 : 



The American Union ; The King of Prussia ; 
Arterial Drainage ; Sidney Herbert ; The Se- 
cession of South Carolina; Cotton Supply; 
Laborers' Dwellings ; The American Difficulty 
(two days) ; Destitution and its Remedy ; The 
American Revolution ; Cotton Culture ; The 
American Union ; Indian Affairs ; America ; 
North and South ; American Politics ; Agricul- 
tural Labor ; The London Bakers ; President 
Buchanan; The Southern Confederacy ; United 
States Population ; The Duchess of Kent ; 
Indian Famines ; Agricultural Statistics ; Presi- 
dent Lincoln's Address; Indian Currency; 
American Census ; The Southern Confederacy ; 



252 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

The Action of the South ; The Census ; America 
and Cotton ; The American Envoy ; Lord Can- 
ning's Address ; The American Crisis ; Spain 
and San Domingo ; East Indian Irrigation ; 
Water-mills ; Hayti and San Domingo ; The 
Conflict in America; American Movements; 
The Secession Party ; The American Contest ; 
The Literary Fund ; Working-men's Visit to 
Paris ; Mr. Clay's Letter ; The American Con- 
test ; Money's ''Java" (four articles) ; Mr. Doug- 
las ; Our American Relations ; Lord Campbell ; 
Results of American Strife ; Our Cotton Sup- 
ply ; American Union ; Soldiers' Homes ; Indian 
Irrigation ; San Domingo ; American Move- 
ments ; Slavery in America ; The Morrill Tariff ; 
Drainage in Agriculture ; Neutrality with Amer- 
ica; The Builders' Strike ; Lord Herbert ; Lord 
Elgin's Government ; The Builders' Dispute ; 
The Strike; The American Contest; Indian 
Famines ; Syrian Improvement ; Affairs of 
Hayti ; Cotton Supply ; The American War 
and Slavery ; Mr Cameron and General Butler ; 
Post-office Robberies ; The American Press ; 
Mrs. Stowe ; The Morrill Tariff ; American 
Affairs ; Domestic Servants ; The Education 
Minutes ; The Georgian Circular ; French Free 
Trade ; The Fremont Resolution ; Laborers' 
Improvidence ; American Humiliation ; The 
Education Code ; A Real Social Evil ; Captain 
Jervis in America ; The American Contest ; 
Indian Cotton ; Slaves in America ; The Prince 
of Wales; American Movements; Lancashire 
Cotton Trade; India and Cotton ; Cotton Grow- 
ing ; The Herbert Testimonial ; Captain Wilkes' 



IN RETREAT; JOURNALISM. 253 

Antecedents ; Arterial Drainage ; The Ameri- 
can Controversy ; Land in India ; Slaves in 
America ; Death of Prince Albert ; Slavery ; 
Loyalty in Canada ; Review of the Year, five 
columns long. 

This gives a total of one hundred and nine 
leading articles, in that one year, on political 
and social affairs. In the same year she wrote 
to the Boston Anti-Slavery Sta7idaid as much 
matter as would have made about forty-five 
''leaders;" and during the same period she 
regularly contributed to Once a Week* a fort- 
nightly article on some current topic, and 
also a series of biographical sketches entitled 
"Representative Men." These Once a Week 
articles were all much longer than " leaders ; " 
the year's aggregate of space filled, in 1861, is 
two hundred and eighty-one of the closely 
printed columns of Once a Week; and this 
would be equivalent to at least one hundred 
and forty leading articles in the usual "leaded" 
type. I need not give a complete list of titles 
of the year's Once a Week articles ; but a few 
may be cited to show what class of subjects she 
selected : " Our Peasantry in Progress," " Ire- 
land and her Queen," "The Harvest," "The 
Domestic Service Question," " What Women 
are Educated for," "American Soldiering," 

*Most of these papers are signed '' From the Mountain." 



254 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

"Deaths by Fire," ''The Sheffield Outrages," 
''Education and the Racing Season." 

Such was Harriet Martiheau's work for the 
year 1861 ; and thus could she, confined to her 
house, comprehend and care for the condition 
of mankind. 

It will be noticed that she had written on 
Domestic Servants both in the Daily News and 
Once a Week ; but still she had not said all that 
she wished to say about the subject, and early 
in the next year she wrote a long article on it, 
which appeared in the Edinburgh for April, 
1862. It is a capital article, distinguished alike 
by common-sense, and by wide-reaching sym- 
pathy ; womanly in the best sense — in its 
domestic knowledge, and its feeling for women 
in their perplexities and troubles, whether as 
servants or mistresses, — and yet philosophical 
in its calmness, its power of tracing from 
causes to effects, and its practical wisdom in 
forestalling future difficulties. 

In this year she began to write historical 
stories, " Historiettes," as she called them, for 
Once a Week. As fictions, they are not equal 
to her best productions of that class ; but their 
special value was less in this direction, or even 
in the detailed historical knowledge that they 
displayed, than in the insight into the philosophy 
of political history which the reader gained. 



IN RE TREA T; JO URN A LISM. 255 

They were illustrated by Millais, and proved so 
attractive that they were continued during the 
next two years. One, dealing with the con- 
stitutional struggle in the reign of Charles I., 
and called '' The Hampdens," has been re-pub- 
lished so recently as 1880. 

A large portion of her time and thought was 
absorbed, in these years, by the American 
struggle and its consequences. Loving the 
United States and their people as she did, the 
interest and anxiety with which she watched 
their progress were extreme. She was no 
coward — as it is, no doubt, hardly necessary to 
remark on this page — and though she grieved 
deeply for the sufferings both of personal friends 
and of the whole country, yet her soul rose up 
in noble exultation over the courage, the resolu- 
tion, and the high-mindedness of the bulk of the 
American nation. Over here, she threw her- 
self with warm eagerness into the effort to 
support those Lancashire workers upon whom 
fell so heavy a tax of deprivation in the cotton 
famine. The patience, the quietness, the hero- 
ism with which our North-Country workers bore 
all that they had to suffer, supported as they 
were by the sympathy of the mass of their 
fellow-countrymen, and by their own intelligent 
convictions that they were aiding a good cause 
by remaining peaceful and quiet — this was 



250 nAKKir/r maktinicau. 

just the sort of thint^ to .'uoiisc all Harriet Mar- 
tinrnn's lovinfij sympathies. "Her face would 
;ill \'w\\y up and the tears would rush to her 
eyes whenever she was told of a noble deed," 
says Miss Arnold ; *' no matter how humble the 
doer, or how smnll the matter might seem, you 
conld src the dcdii^lit it <;ave her to know th;it 
a fine, brave, or unselfish act had been done." 
Aninuilcd by such res])ectful joy in the attitude 
of tlic; L;inca.sliir(;' woikcrs, slie tlircw her.self 
into their service; and her correspondence on 
this topic during i86l, when she used all her 
public and private influence on their behalf, and 
employed her best energies in aiding and ad- 
vising the relief committees, would fill a large 
volume. 

In tlu' midst of her labors for America, she 
could not l)iit be gratified by the testimonies 
which constantly reached her from that country 
to the appi-eciation of the work which she had 
done and was doing. 

The Ilislorv of the Peaee was re[)rinted in 
Boston in the very midst of tlie civil war, "at 
the instance of men of business throughout the 
country, who believe it will do great good 
from its ])()litieal and yet more economical les- 
sons, which are so much wanted." Hie i)ub- 
lishers of the Atlantic Monthly appealed to her 
to write them a series of articles on ''Military 



IN I^ETREAT; JOURNALISM. 257 

Hygiene ; " and, over-pressed as she was, she 
could not refuse a request which enabled her 
to do much good service for the soldiers of the 
North, for whom she felt so deeply. Nor were 
more private tributes to the value of her efforts 
lacking. A set of the Rebellion Record, pub- 
lished by Putnam, was sent to her with the 
cover stamped under the title with these 
words : " Presented by citizens of New York to 
Harriet Martineau ; " and innumerable books 
came with testimonies inscribed by the writers, 
such as that in Henry Wilson's Slave Power in 
America, which was as follows : " Mrs. Harriet 
Martineau ; with the gratitude of the author for 
her friendship for his country, and her devotion 
to freedom." * 

* The highest honor yet done to her memory is the work of 
our sisters and brothers across the Atlantic. A public sub- 
scription has raised funds for a statue of Harriet Martincaui 
which has been executed by Anne Whitney, in white marble. 
The statue represents Mrs. Martineau seated, with her hands 
folded over a manuscript on her knees. The head is raised, 
and has a light veil thrown over the back of it and falling 
down upon the shoulders, while a shawl is draped partially over 
the figure. The eyes are looking forth, as though in that 
thoughtful questioning of the future to which she often gave 
herself The statue was unveiled in the Old South Hall, Bos- 
ton, December 26th, 1883, in the presence of many notable per- 
sonages. Mrs. Mary Livermore presided, and S[)ceches were 
made by William Lloyd Garrison, Jun., and Wendell Phillips. 
in the case of the last-named it was his final sj)cech, for he, 
too, six weeks after, was numbered amongst those who are at 



258 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

In the latter part of the year 1862, Harriet 
Martineau wrote a paper on " Our Convict 
System," which appeared in the following 
January number of the Edinburgh. It will be 
noted that she never wrote on the politics of 
the day — the action of the Government and 
Opposition of the moment — in this Review; 
her political principles were too democratic for 
the great Whig organ. 

In Once a Week, however, her articles became 
more decisively political year by year. Some of 
her best political papers are in that magazine 
for 1863. The most noteworthy feature in 
them are their basis of principles and not of 
party, and their practical wisdom. When I 
speak of her devotion to principles, in politics, 
I half fear that I may be misunderstood — for 
so shockingly does Cant spawn its loathsomeness 
over every holy phrase, that such expressions 
come to us ''defamed by every charlatan," and 
doubtful in their use. But she was neither 
doctrinaire, nor blind, nor pig-headed, nor phari- 
saic, nor jealous, nor scheming ; but wise, brave, 
truthful, upright, and independent. Love of 
justice and truthfulness of speech were as much 
to her in public affairs as they are to any high- 
rest. " The audience sat in silence for a moment as the white 
vision was unveiled ; then went up such applause as stirred the 
echoes of the historic interior in which the ceremony took place." 



IN RETREAT; JOURNALISM. 259 

minded person in private. Her desire in her 
thoughts and utterances on politics was simply 
to secure **the greatest happiness for the great- 
est number" of the people; and the spirit in 
which she worked was correctly appraised by 
the then editor of the Daily News, William 
Weir, when he wrote to her in these terms, in 
1856: — 

I have never before met — I do not hope again 
to meet — one so earnest (as you) to promote 
progress, so practical in the means by which to 
arrive at it. My aim in life is to be able to say, 
when it is closing, '*I, too, have done somewhat, 
though little, to benefit my kind;" and there 
are so few who do not regard this as Quixotism 
or hypocrisy, that I shrink even from confess- 
ing it. 

He so well recognized that as truly her aim 
also that he did not fear to utter to her his high 
aspiration. It is in this spirit that her political 
articles are written, and the result of the con- 
stant reference to principles is that her essays 
are almost as instructive reading now as they 
were when first published ; then, their interest 
and their importance were both incalculable. 

Of such articles Harriet Martineau wrote in 
the Daily News, from first to last, sixteen him- 
dred and forty-two : besides the great number 
that I have referred to, which appeared in other 



26o HARRIET MARTINEAU, 

journals. I wonder how many of the men 
who have presumed to say that the women are 
''incapable of understanding politics," or of 
•/sympathizing in great causes," received a large 
part of their political education, and of rousing- 
stimulus to public-spirited action, from those 
journalistic writings by Harriet Martineau? 

An instructive article on "The Progress of 
the Negro Race " was prepared for the Edin- 
burgh of January, 1864. Only a few weeks 
after the appearance of this, there fell upon her 
the greatest blow of her old age. Her beloved 
niece Maria, who had for so long filled the 
place of a daughter to her, was taken ill with 
typhoid fever, and died after a three weeks' ill- 
ness. Maria Martineau's active disposition, and 
her intellectual power (which was far above the 
average) had made her an ideal companion for 
her aunt, and the blow to her was a terrible one. 
Ill and suffering as she was before, this shock 
completed the wreck of Harriet Martineau's 
health. She had a dreary time of illness im- 
mediately after her niece's death ; and although 
she went on writing for some time longer, it 
was always with the feeling that the end of her 
long life's industry was near at hand. 

She was not left alone ; for Maria's youngest 
sister, Jane, presently offered voluntarily to fill, 
as far as she could, the vacant place at "The 



IN RETREAT; JOURNALISM. 26 1 

Knoll." The family from which these sisters 
came was one in which kindliness and gener- 
osity were (and are to this day, with its 
younger members who remain) distinguishing 
features. It was no light matter for Mr. and 
Mrs. Robert Martineau to part with a second 
daughter to their sister ; but, as it was Jane's 
own wish to try to be to that beloved and hon- 
ored relative what Maria had been, the parents 
would not refuse their permission. Harriet 
wrote of this to Mr. Reeve with her heart full ; 
telling him how ** humbly grateful" she felt for 
what was so generously offered to her, and with 
what thankfulness she accepted the blessing. 
Even in such circumstances, she could note 
what a delight it was to find that Maria's own 
spirit of devotedness prevailed amongst them 
all — for nothing could be nobler and sweeter 
than the conduct of everyone. 

By June of that same year, 1864, Mrs. Mar- 
tineau was ready to undertake another article 
on a topic which pressed upon her mind, '' Co- 
operative Societies," which was published in 
the Edi7ibtirgh for October following. 

She went on writing for the Daily NewSy 
through that year and the next, though the 
effort came to be constantly more and more 
laborious. Her interest in public affairs did 
not flag ; nor is there the least sign of failure 



262 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

of power in her letters ; but she became increas- 
ingly conscious that it was a strain upon her to 
write under the responsibility of addressing the 
public. 

Early in 1865 she wrote some articles on 
*' The Scarcity of Nurses," "poked up to do 
it," as she said, by Florence Nightingale. In 
the April of the same year was prepared an 
article on ** Female Convicts," which was pub- 
lished in the Edinburgh for October. In send- 
ins: this she intimated to the editor that it 
would be her last contribution, as she felt the 
strain of such writing too great for her strength. 
After all she did prepare one more article for 
the Edinburgh, though it was as long after- 
wards as 1868. This was the paper on " Salem 
Witchcraft," which will be found in the num- 
ber of that Review for July. It formed Flar- 
riet Martineau's last contribution of any length 
to literature ; and she wrote it with some re- 
luctance, after having suggested the subject to 
Mr. Reeve, and he having replied that he could 
find no one suitable to undertake it but herself. 

She was very loath to cease her writing for 
the Daily News, and continued it until the 
spring of 1866. It was a great trial when at 
last the moment came that she felt she abso- 
lutely mnst be freed from the obligation and 
the temptation to frequent work. But the 



IN RETREAT; JOURNALISM. 263 

spring was always her worst time as to health ; 
and during this customary vernal exacerbation 
of illness, in April, 1866, she found herself 
obliged at last, after fourteen years* service, to 
send in her resignation to the Daily News. 

When she thus terminated her connection 
with the paper through whose columns she had 
spoken so long, she practically concluded her 
literary life. Neither her intellectual powers, 
nor her interest in public affairs, were percepti- 
bly diminished ; as will presently be seen, these 
continued to the end of her life all but una- 
bated. Her regular literary exertions were 
now, however, at an end ; and she was ill 
enough by this time, her niece tells me, to feel 
only relief at being freed from the constant 
pressure of the duty of thought and speech. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE LAST YEARS. 

Harriet Martineau had never gone the right 
way to work to become rich by literature. She 
had not chosen her subjects with a view to the 
mere monetary success she might attain, and, 
not infrequently, she had displayed a rare 
generosity in her pecuniary affairs. In April, 
1867, she was plunged into perplexity about the 
means of living, by the temporary failure of 
the Brighton Railway to pay its dividends. 
After all her work, she had but little to lose. 
She had from investments in the preference 
stock of that railway ;£230 per annum, and she 
had only ;£ 1 50 yearly from all other sources. 
Such was the fortune saved, after labors such 
as hers, through a long life of industry and 
thrift. There was a beautiful contest between 
the inmates of that home, when the trouble 
came, as to which of them should begin to 
make the necessary sacrifices involved int econo- 
mizing. Miss Jane Martineau and the maid 
Caroline were each ready with their offers, and 



THE LAST YEARS. 265 

the invalid mistress of the house was with 
difficulty induced to continue her wine and 
dinner ale, while she declared, with a brave 
assumption of carelessness, that she should be 
rather glad than otherwise to be rid of seeing 
the Times daily and getting the periodic box of 
books from "Mudie's." It is touching to note 
how she tried to lightly pass off this sacrifice of 
current literature, when one knows that reading 
was the chief solace of her lonely and suffering 
days. Her family intervened, however, to 
prevent any such deprivations, and by-and-by 
the company resumed payment of its dividends. 
In 1868, she received a generous offer, which 
touched her very deeply. Mr. J. R, Robinson, 
of the Daily News, proposed to her that there 
should be a reprint of the several biographical 
sketches which she had contributed to the 
paper during her connection with it ; and 
he offered to take all the trouble and respon- 
sibility of putting the volume through the 
press, while leaving to her the whole of the 
profits. She had not even supposed that the 
copyright in the biographies which she had 
written for the paper from time to time, upon 
the occasions of the deaths of eminent persons, 
remained her property. Mr. Robinson had the 
satisfaction of assuring her that the proprietors 
held her at liberty to reproduce these writings, 



266 HARRIET MARTINEAU, 

and, with that comrade's generosity which is 
not altogether rare among journalists, her kind 
friend devoted himself to securing her a good 
publisher, and editing the volume, Biographical 
Sketches, for her benefit. These vignettes well 
deserved re-production. She had had more or 
less personal acquaintance with nearly every 
one of the forty-six eminent persons of whom 
she treated; and the portraits which she 
sketched were equally vivid and impartial. The 
work was received by the public with an enthu- 
siasm which repaid Mr. Robinson for his gener- 
ous efforts. It was reprinted in America; and 
it is now in its fourth English edition. 

The last occasion upon which she was to give 
her powers and her influence to a difficult but 
great public work must now be mentioned. It 
was the final effort of her career. Marked as 
that life had been all through by devotedness to 
public duty, she never before was engaged in a 
task so painful and difficult, or one which, upon 
mere personal grounds, she might more strongly 
have desired to evade. But at near seventy 
years old, and so enfeebled that she had thought 
her work quite finished, she no more hesitated 
to come to the front under fire when it became 
necessary, than she had done in those active 
younger days when combat may have had its 
own delights. 



THE LAST YEARS. 267 

The subj ect was an Act of Parliament passed 
in 1869, having reference to certain police 
powers over women in various large towns. 
'' In our time, or in any other," wrote Mrs. 
Martineau, " there never was a graver question." 
It was clear to her that if women " did not insist 
upon the restoration of the most sacred liberties 
of half the people of England, men alone would 
never do it ; " aijd she wrote four letters on the 
subject to the Daily News, as powerful, as sen- 
sible, as free from cant of any kind, as clear in 
the appreciation of facts, and as definite and able 
in the presentation of them, as anything she had 
ever written. She wrote, also, and signed an 
''Appeal to the Women of England " upon the 
subject, where her name headed the list of 
signers, whilst that of Florence Nightingale 
came next. Two such women, venerated not 
less for the intellectual capacity and practical 
wisdom than for the devoted benevolence that 
they had shown in their long lives, were well 
able to arouse and lead the moral sense of the 
womanhood of England in this crisis. Other 
respected names were soon added to theirs, but 
it would not be easy to over-estimate the value 
of the self-sacrificing, brave action, at the most 
critical moment, of these two great and honor- 
able women. 

Besides writing articles, and appeals, and 



268 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

signing documents which were placarded as 
election posters in some great towns, Mrs. Mar- 
tineau helped that cause in the way told in the 
following letter to Mr. Atkinson : 

May 2ist, 1871. 
One pleasant thing has happened lately. I 
longed iox money for a public object [repeal of 
the acts in question], and, unable to do better, 
worked a chair, and had it beautifully made up. 
It was produced at a great evening party in 
London, and seized upon and vehemently com- 
peted for, and it has actually brought fifty 
guineas ! In the middle of the night it occurs 
to me what a thing it is to give fifty guineas — 
so much as I had longed for money to give that 
fund. I was asked for a letter of explanation 
and statement to go with the chair, and, of 
course, did it by that post. 

Work for this cause formed the most keen 
and active interest of her latest years. In this 
she thought and labored constantly. She gave 
her name and support to other objects, but only 
quietly. Amongst other things she was a mem- 
ber of the Women's Suffrage Society ; and she 
was a subscriber to the movement for the medi- 
cal education of women. 

In all public affairs, indeed, her interest 
remained keen and unabated to the very last, 
as the letters for which I am indebted to Mr. 
Atkinson, and which I am to quote, will abun- 



THE LAST YEARS. 269 

dantly show. These letters will indicate, too, 
something of the quiet course of her now 
uneventful daily life. Sick and weary as she 
was, it will be seen that literature and politics, 
the public welfare, and the concerns of her 
household's inmates, still occupied her thoughts 
and her pen. 

Letters to Mr. Atkinson. 

August 24, 1870. 
... I am as careful as possible to prevent 
anyone losing sleep on my account, and being 
disturbed at meals, or failing in air, exercise and 
pleasure. If these regular healthy habits of my 
household become difficult, we are to have a 
trained nurse at once. This is settled. I am 
disposed to think, myself, that the last stage 
will be short, probably the end sudden. 

The tone of this last sentence is no affecta- 
tion. '* She used to talk about her death as if 
it meant no more than going into the next 
room," said one who knew her in these years. 

September 10, 1870. 
... I am not sure whether you have read Dr. 
Bence Jones's Life and Letter's of Faraday. I 
have been thankful, this last week, for the 
strong interest of that book, which puts Conti- 
nental affairs out of my head for hours together. 
The first half volume is rather tiresome — giv- 



270 HARRIET MARTINEAU, 

ing us four times as much as necessary of the 
uncultivated youth's early prosing on crude mor- 
alities, etc. It is quite right to give us some of 
this, to show from how low a point of thought 
and style he rose up to his perfection of expres- 
sion as a lecturer and writer ; but a quarter of 
the early stuff would have been enough for that. 
The succeeding part, for hundreds of pages, is 
the richest treat I have had for many a day. I 
can only distantly and dimly follow the scientific 
lectures and writings ; but I understand enough 
of sympathy ; and the disclosures of the moral 
nature of the man is perfectly exquisite. I have 
never known, and have scarcely dreamed of, a 
spirit and temper so thoroughly uniting the best 
attributes of the sage and the child. 

October i8, 1870. 

I had my envelope directed yesterday, but 
was prevented writing, and in the evening came 
your welcome letter. I am glad to know when 
you mean to leave your quarters ; and every line 
from France is interesting. 

I wonder whether you remember a night in 
London when dear Mrs. Reid and you and I 
were returning in her carriage from Exeter 
Hall and the Messiah. I was saying that that 
sacred drama reminded me of Holy Philae, and 
the apotheosis of Osiris, and how the one was as 
true as the other, with its ** Peace on earth, and 
good-will to men," so false a prophesy, etc., etc. 
Whereupon Mrs. Reid said, plaintively (of the 
Messiah), " I believe it all at the time," but she 
did not set up any pretense of the promises 



THE LAST YEARS. 2/1 

having been fulfilled. It does not seem as if 
Christendom had got on very much since the 
world said, "See how these Christians love one 
another ! " I seem to have got to a new state 
of mind about war, or I may perhaps forget the 
emotions of youth ; but I seem never before to 
have felt the horror, disgust, shame — in short, 
misery — that the spectacle of this war creates 
now. I am reading less and less m the news- 
papers ; for the truth is, I cannot endure it. 
There is no good in any hopeless spectacle ; and 
for France, I am, like most people, utterly hope- 
less. . . .'By selling themselves for twenty 
years to the worst and meanest man in Europe, 
the people of France have incurred destruction ; 
and though most of us knew this all the time, 
we do not suffer the less from the spectacle now. 
... I suppose the French will have no alterna- 
tive but peace in a little. while ; but, when all 
that is settled, internal strife and domestic ruin 
will remain ahead. The truth is, the morale of 
the French is corrupted to the core. All habit 
of integrity and sincerity is apparently lost ; and 
when a people prefers deception to truth, vain- 
glory to honor, passion to reason — all is over. 
I will leave it, for it is a terrible subject. I must 
just say that I believe and know that there are 
French citizens — a very few — who understand 
the case, but they are as wretched as they neces- 
sarily must be. But "the gay, licentious, 
proud," the pleasure-loving, self-seeking aristoc- 
racy, and the brutally ignorant rural population, 
must entirely paralyze the intelligent, an honest 
few scattered in their midst. But I must leave 
all this. 



2J2 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

The only news we have is of the royal mar- 
riage (Princess Louise) which pleases everybody. 
It is a really great event — as a sign politically, 
and as a fact socially and morally. After the 
Queen's marriage, I wrote repeatedly on behalf 
of repealing the Royal Marriage Act tJien, while 
there could be no invidious appearance in it. 
The present chaotic condition of Protestant 
princedoms in Germany may answer the pur- 
pose almost as well as a period of abeyance. 
Any way, the relaxation seems a wise and happy 
one. 

My items of news are small in comparison, 
but not small to me ; especially that a happy 
idea struck me lately, of trying a spring mat- 
tress as a means of obtaining sleep of some 
continuance. I have ventured upon getting 
one ; and, after four nights, there is no doubt 
of my being able to sleep longer, and with more 
loss of consciousness than for a very long time. 
Last night I once slept three hours with only 
one break. Otherwise, I go on much the 
same. There is one objection to these beds 
which healthy people are unaware of' — that so 
much more strength is required to move in 
bed, from want of purchase. This is a trouble, 
but the advantages far outweigh it. 

Dear Jenny comes home to-morrow evening, 
all the better, I am assured, for three weeks at 
the sea, in breeze and sun, and all manner of 
beauty of land and sea (at Barmouth, and with 
a merry party of young people). And here is 
a game basket, arrived from parts unknown, 
with a fine hare, two brace of partridges, and a 



THE LAST YEARS, 2/3 

pheasant. A savory welcome for Jenny ! 
Cousin Mary has been more good and kind 
than I can say. She stays for Jenny, and 
leaves us on Friday. I must not begin upon 
Huxley, Tyndall, and Evans, whom I have 
been reading. Much pleasure to you, dear 
friend, in your closing weeks. 

Yours ever, 

H. Martineau. 

The sleepless nights repeatedly mentioned 
in these letters were a source of great suffering 
to her in these latest years ; under medical 
advice she tried smoking as a means of pro- 
curing better rest, with some success. She 
smoked usually through the chiboque which 
she had brought home with h*er from the East, 
and which she had there learned to use, as she 
relates with her customary simplicity and direct- 
ness in the appendix to Eastern Life: "I found 
it good for my health," she says there, "and I 
saw no more reason why I should not take it 
than why English ladies should not take their 
glass of sherry at home — an indulgence which 
I do not need; I continued the use of my 
chiboque for some weeks after my return, and 
then only left it off because of the inconven- 
ience." When health and comfort were to be 
promoted by it, she resumed it. Her nights 
were, nevertheless, very broken, and frequent 
allusions occur in her letters to the suffering of 



274 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

sleeplessness, with its concomitant of drowsi- 
ness in the day-time. 

The next letter is on trivial topics, truly; 
but is none the less valuable for the uncon- 
scious record which it affords of her domestic 
character. The anxiety for her household com- 
panion's enjoyment, the delight in the kindness 
that the young folk had shown to each other 
and to the poor Christmas guests, the pleasure 
in the happiness of other people, are all char- 
acteristic features which are of no trivial con- 
sequence. 

Ambleside, Jan. 2, '71- 
I am so sorry for the way you are passing 
from the old year to the new that I cannot help 
saying so. I ought to be anything but sorry, 
considering what good you are doing — essen- 
tial, indispensable good; but you must be so 
longing for your own quiet, warm home, and 
the friends around it, that I heartily wish you 
were there. . . . As for me, my business is to 
promote, as far as possible, the cheerfulness of 
my household. There really has been much 
fun, — and yet more sober enjoyment, through- 
out this particular Christmas. In my secret 
mind I am nervously anxious about Jenny to 
whom cold is a sort of poison ; but, when she 
had once observed that there was much less 
cold here than at home, or anywhere else that 
she could be, I determined to say no more, and 
to make the best of it. She said it for my 



THE LAST YEARS. 2/5 

sake, I know (the only reason for her ever 
speaking of herself), and I frankly received it 
as a comfortable saying. She is getting on 
better than any of us expected, and she has 
been thoroughly happy in exercising our hospi- 
talities. . . . Jenny's brother Frank came for 
three days at Christmas ; and Harriet made 
herself housekeeper and secretary, and made 
Jenny the guest, to set her wholly at liberty 
for her brother. It was quite a pretty sight — 
they were all so happy ! There was a kitchen 
party on Christmas Day; by far the best we 
ever had ; for Frank did the thing thoroughly 
— read a comic tale, taught the folk games, 
played off the snapdragons, and finally pro- 
duced boxes of new and strange crackers, 
which spat forth the most extraordinary pres- 
ents ! All the guests and the servants were in 
raptures with him. The oldest widow but one 
vowed that "■ she did not know zvheii she had 
seen such a gentleman" — which I think very 
probable. They came to dinner at noon, and 
stayed till past lO P. M. Think of spending 
those ten hours entirely in the two kitchens, 
and having four meals in the time ! My nieces, 
and nephews were tired ! So was I, though I 
had only the consciousness of the occasion. . . 
All this is so good for Jenny ! and she will like 
the quiet and leisure that will follow. . . . 

I am more alive and far less suffering than in 
the great heats of autumn. Your slips and cut- 
tings are very interesting, and I am very thank- 
ful for them. More of them when (or if) my 



276 HARRIET MARTINEAU, 

head is worth more. Of course we shall hear 
when you get home. May it be soon ! 
Yours ever, dear friend, 

H. Martineau. 

Ambleside, March 6, '71. 
We are in a queer state just now. Gladstone 
turns out exactly as I expected. I once told 
some, who are his colleagues now, that he would 
do some very fine deeds — give us some sepa- 
rate measures of very great value, and would do 
it in an admirable manner ; but that he would 
show himself incapable of governing the coun- 
try. For two years he did the first thing; and 
now, this third year, he is showing the expected 
incapacity. Were there ever such means thrown 
away as we see this session.'* Probably you are 
out of the way of hearing the whole truth of the 
situation, and I cannot go into it here. Suffice 
it, that Gladstone totters (and three or four 
more), and that several departments are in such 
a mess and muddle that one hardly sees how 
they are to be brought straight again ; and all 
this without the least occasion ! One matter, 
in which I feel deep interest, and on which I 
have acted, is prospering, and we have the Gov- 
ernment at our disposal; so that we hope they 
will remain in office till we have secured what 
we want ; but the more we have to do with Min- 
isters, the weaker we find them. And Gladstone 
is not only weak as a reasoner (with all his hair- 
splitting), but ignorant in matters of political 
principle. 



THE LAST YEARS. 2;/ 

The next letter is very characteristic and per- 
fectly true to her state of mind with regard to 
flatterers : 

May 21, '71. 

And now you will want to know how Miss 

and we fared this day week. We (she and I) 
were together only three-quarters of an hour ; 
and for part of that time I was too much 
exhausted to benefit much. My impression is 
that she is not exactly the person for the invalid 
room. But I may be utterly wrong in this. I 
might be misled by the fatiguing sort of annoy- 
ance of overpraise — of worship in fact. I don't 
want to be ungracious about what my books 
were to her in her childhood and youth ; I am 
quite ready to believe her sincere in what she 
said. But not the less is it bad taste. It must 
be bad taste to expatiate on that one topic which 
it is most certain that the hearer cannot sympa- 
thize in. Also, I have much doubt of her being 
accurate in her talk. There is a random air 
about her statements, and she said two or three 
t-hings that certainly were mistakes, more or 
) jss. These things, and a general smoothness 
in her talk, while she was harsh about some of 

the were what I did not quite like. As for 

the rest, she was as kind as possible; and not 
only kind to me, but evidently with a turn that 
way, and a habit of it in regard to children and 
friends. . . . 

June II, '71. 
.... Of all odd things, Dean Stanley and 
Lady Augusta have been, by way of a trip, to 



2/8 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

Paris, from last Monday to Saturday. How can 
they ! One would think nothing could take 
one there but some strong call of duty. The 
least that one must read and hear is enough to 
make one's heart ache, and to spoil one's sleep, 
and to disfigure life till one does not wish to 
look at it any more. I do long to have done 
with it. I believe it is the first occasion in my 
life of my having felt hopeless of any destiny, 
individual or national. . . . How badly our 
public affairs are going ! Gladstone & Co, are 
turning out exactly as many of us foresaw. The 
thing nearest my heart (repeal of the acts 
above alluded to), and more important than all 
other public questions, will do well. It is, I 
believe, secure, in virtue of an amount of effort 
and devotedness never surpassed. You know 
what I mean. I rest upon that achievement — 
a vital aim with me and others for many years 
— with satisfaction and entire hopefulness, but 
in all other directions the prospect is simply 
dreary. In that one case, we, who shall have 
achieved the object, have saved Ministers from 
themselves, and from evil councillors. Wher- 
ever they have, this year, trusted their own 
wisdom and resources, they have failed, or see 
that they must fail. They would have been out 
since early in April, but for want of a leader on 
the Conservative side ; and they still make their 
party dwindle till there will be no heart or 
energy left in the Liberal ranks — lately so 
strong and ardent ! They may be individually 
clever ; but they cannot govern the country. 
This is eminently the case with Gladstone ; and 



THE LAST YEARS. 279 

it may serve as the, description of the group. I 
shall not dare to ask the Arnolds about such 
matters — so thoroughly did they assume, when 
they went away, that all must be right with 
"William" and Co. in the Cabinet. 

Nov. 5, '71. 
. . . Mrs. Grote seems to Hke to open her feel- 
ings to me, as a very old friend of hers and her 
husband's. Did I tell you that she sent me — 
to put me in possession of her state — her 
private diary, from the first day of her alarm 
about her husband's health to the day she sent 
it.-* It was more interesting than I can say; 
but it brought after it something more striking 
still. Some half-century ago, Jeremy Bentham 
threw upon paper some thoughts on the opera- 
tion of natural religion on human welfare, or 
ill-fare. His MSS. were left to Mrs. Grote 
(or portions of them), and those papers were 
issued by the Grotes under the title. Analysis of 
the Influence of Natitral Religion^ etc. etc., by 
Philip Beauchamp." It is a tract of 142 pp. It 
is the boldest conceivable effort at fair play ; 
and in this particular effect, it is most strik- 
ing. At the outset, all attempts to divide the 
"abuses " of religion from other modes of opera- 
tion are repudiated at once ; and the claim is so 
evidently sound that the effect of the exposure is 
singular. Well ! of course the tendency of the 
exposition is to show that the absolute darkness 
of the Unseen Life supposed must produce a 
demoralizing effect, and destroy ease of mind. 
There is something almost appalling in the un- 



280 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

flinching representation of the mischief of the 
spirit of fear, of its torment, and of its damaging 
effects in creating a habit of adulation, in per- 
verting the direction of our desires, in corrupt- 
ing our estimate of good and evil, in leaving us, 
in short, no chance of living a healthy and 
natural life, but rather, making cowards, liars, 
and selfish rascals of us all. I can't go on, being 
tired ; and you will be thinking, as you read, 
that this is only the old story — of the mischiefs 
and miseries of superstition. But there is some- 
thing impressive in the cheerful simplicity with 
which Bentham tells us his opinion of the sort 
of person recommended to us for a master 
under the name of God, and with which he 
warns us all of the impossibility of our being 
good or happy under such a Supreme Being. 
In looking at the table of contents, and seeing 
the catalogue he gives of evil effects of belief in 
the barest scheme of Natural Religion, one 
becomes aware, as if for the first time, of the 
atmosphere of falsehood against which we ought 
to have recoiled all our lives since becoming 
capable of thought. 

Dec. 30, '71. 
... I go off rapidly as a correspondent ; 
there is no use blinking the fact. I am so slow 
and write so badly! and leave off too tired. 
Oddly enough, this very week one of the Daily 
News authorities has been uttering a groaning 
longing for my pen in the service of that paper, 
as of old. The occasion is a short letter of mine 
in last Thursday's paper, which you may have 



THE LAST YEARS. 28 1 

seen,* If so, you will see that I had no choice. 
W. E. Forster was at Fox How; and I got 
Jenny to Carry the volume of Brougham (vol. 
iii. p. 302) to consult Forster and Arnolds 
about what I should do, W. E. Forster being 
in the same line of business with my father, and 
a public man — man of the world. He was 
clear: it was impossible to leave my father 
under a false imputation of having failed. And 
when my letter appeared, he was delighted with 
it ; so are those of my family that I have heard 
from ; and, above all. Daily Neivs editors. 
They hope and believe it will excite due distrust 
of Brougham's representations, and encourage 
others to expose his falsehoods. His suppress- 
ions are as wonderful as his disclosures ; e. g, 
the very important crisis in his career, known 
by the name of the ''Grey Banquet" at Edin- 
burgh, he cuts completely out of the history 
of the time — perverting Lord Durham's story 
as well as his own. I can see how the false 
story of me and mine got made ; but enough of 
that — especially if you have not seen the letter 
in the Daily News. Forster is kindly and quiet, 
but he is altered. He is now — the Courtier! 
— and odd sort of one, with much Quaker 
innocence and prudence in it ; but of a sort 
which leaves me no hope of his handling of his 
Education measure. There will be such a fight ! 
and the Nonconformists are right, and know 
that they are. You will probably see that 
achieved — a real National Education estab- 
lished, secular and compulsory. 

* Refuting a statement made in Lord Brougham's Aictobi- 
ography that her father had failed in business. 



282 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 



1 



The Ambleside surgeon, who had undertaken, 
in acccordance with Harriet Martineau's will, 
to prepare and transmit her skull and brain to 
Mr. Atkinson, died in the year 1872. The fol- 
lowing letter shows that the progress of time 
had in no way diminished her willingness to 
leave her head for scientific investigation : 

Ambleside, April 23, '72. 
(Shakespere's birthday and Wordsworth's 
death-day.) 
Dear Friend, 

I am not writing about poets to-day, nor 
about any "play" topic, nor anything gay, or 
pretty, or amusing. I write on business only. 

When you heard of Mr. Shepherd's death, you 
must, I should think, have considered what was 
to be done in regard to fulfilling the provision 
of my will about skull and brain. It is to inform 
you of this that I write. 

Mr. Shepherd's assistant and successor is Mr. 
William Moore King, a young man who is con- 
sidered very clever, and is certainly very kind, 
gentlemanly, simple in mind and manners, and 
married to a charming girl (grand-daughter of 
Martin, the artist). Jenny has known them for 
two years, having called on their arrival. I had 
seen him twice before this last week. I wrote 
to him the other day, to ask him to give me half 
an hour for confidential conversation ; and he 
came when I was quite alone for the morning. 

I told him the whole matter of the provision 
in my will, and of Mr. Shepherd's engagement. 



THE LAST YEARS, 283 

in case of his surviving me in sufficient vigor to 
keep his word. Mr. King listened anxiously, 
made himself -master of the arrangement, and 
distinctly engaged to do what we ask, saying 
that it was so completely clear between us that 
we need never speak of it again. 

I may add that Mr. King has shown me the 
letters in which Mrs. Martineau made the 
necessary arrangements with him for his task. 
Mr. Atkinson was, however, now residing out 
of England, and not in a position to usefully 
accept the bequest, so he intimated his desire 
to be freed from his promise to undertake the 
examination of his friend's brain. A codicil 
was added to Harriet Martineau's will, therefore, 
revoking the provision about this matter. 

The next quotation shows how little the long 
prospect of death had changed her expectations 
and desires about things supernatural : — 

November 19, '72. 
I mean to try to do justice to what I think 
and believe, by avowing the satisfaction I truly 
feel with my release from selfish superstition and 
trumpery self-regards, and with the calm con- 
clusions of my reason about what to desire and 
expect in the position in which each one of us 
mysterious human beings finds him or herself. 
It is all we have to do now (such as you and I), 
to be satisfied with the conditions of the life we 
have left behind us, and fearless of the death 



284 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

which lies before us. Nobody will ever find me 
craving the '' glory and bliss " which the 
preachers set before us, and pray that we may 
obtain. Some of them are very good and kind, 
I know ; but they will never create any longing 
of the sort in me. But why should I scribble 
on in this way to you } Perhaps because our 
new Evangelical curate has written me almost 
the worst and silliest letter of this sort that I 
ever saw. Enough of him then ! But I have 
left myself no room or strength for other mat- 
ters this time. I wanted to tell you about the 
effect — according to my experience — of a 
second reading of Adam Bede, Miss Evans' first 
great novel. A singular mind is hers, I should 
think, and truly wonderful in power and scope. 
Her intellectual power and grace attract and win 
people of very high intellectual quality. 

Miss Jane Martineau was at this time in very 
delicate health, and, after long fluctuations of 
hope and fear, was compelled to leave her aunt 
for the winter and go to a warmer climate. 
Mrs. Martineau's letters show how cruel was 
her anxiety for " my precious Jenny," and are 
filled with expressions of her feelings about the 
state of her beloved young companion. All 
this is, of course, too personal for quotation, but 
a perusal of it amply confirms the accounts of 
her domestic affection, and the warmth and 
sensitiveness of her heart. 

The loss of her niece from her side ultimately 



THE LAST YEARS. 285 

compelled the engagement of a companion, Miss 
Goodwin, a young lady who became as much 
attached to Harriet Martineau as did all others 
who came in close relationship with her in those 
years. 

May loth, '73- 

. . . The great event to me and my house- 
hold is, that Caroline — my dear maid and nurse 
— has seen Jenny ... It was such a pouring 
out on both sides. It would have almost broken 
Jenny's heart not to have seen this very dear 
friend of ours, when only half an hour off. All 
her longing is to be by my side again. I never 
discourage this ; but I don't believe it can come 
to pass. . . . Everybody is kind and helpful ; 
and our admiration of Miss Goodwin ever in- 
creases. 

Ambleside, Sept. 7th, '73. 
Dear Friend, 

I am not ungrateful nor insensible about 
your treating me with letters, whether I reply 
or not. You may be sure I would write if I 
could. But you know I cannot, and why. At 
times I really indulge in the hope and belief 
that the end is drawing near, and then again, 
if I compare the present day with a year ago, 
it seems as if there was no very great change. 
I still do not make mistakes — or only in trifling 
slips of memory common enough at seventy. 
Still I have no haunting ideas, ho delusions, no 
fears, — except that vague sort of misgiving 
that occurs when it becomes a fatigue to talk, 
and to move about, and to plan the duties of 



286 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

the day. Yet aware as I am of the character 
of the change in me, and confident as I still 
am of not making a fool of myself till I alter 
further, I now seldom or never (almost never) 
feel quite myself. I have told you this often 
lately ; but I feel as if it would not be quite 
honest to omit saying it while feeling it to be 
the most prominent experience of my life at 
this time. It is not always easy to draw the 
line as to what one should tell in such a case. 
On the one hand, I desire to avoid all appear- 
ance of weak and tiresome complaining of what 
cannot be helped ; and on the other, I do wish 
not to appear unaware of my failures. I am 
sure you understand this, and can sympathize 
in the anxiety about keeping the balance hon- 
est. There have been heart-attacks now and 
then lately, which have caused digitalis and 
belladonna to be prescribed for me ; and this 
creates a hope that the general bodily condition 
is declining in good proportion to the brain 
weakening. . '. . Miss and her naval part- 
ner remind me of the pair in the novel that I 
have read eleven times — Miss Austen's Pej'- 
suasion — unequalled in interest, charm and 
truth (to my mind). There is a hint there of 
the drawback of separation; but yet, — who 
would have desired anything for Anne Elliot 
and her Captain Wentworth but that they 
should marry } I am now in the middle of Miss 
Thackeray's Old Kensington — reading it with 
much keen pleasure, and some satisfaction and 
surprise. There are exquisite touches in it ; 
and there is a further disclosure of power, of 



THE LAST YEARS. 2^7 

genuine, substantial, vital power; but her man- 
nerism grows on her deplorably, it seems to 
me. The amount and the mode of analysis of 
minds and characters are too far dispropor- 
tioned to the other elements to be accepted 
without regret, and, perhaps, some fear for the 
future. But I have not read half the book yet ; 
and I hope I may have to recall all fault-finding, 
and to dwell only on the singular value and 
beauty of the picture-gallery she has given us. 

An incident of this year's (1873) story, which 
must not be overlooked, was an offer of a pen- 
sion made to Harriet Martineau by Mr. Glad- 
stone. She had written sadly of her own 
sufferings in a letter to Mrs. Grote, which 
referred also to Mr. Grote's life, and that lady 
had published the letter. Mr. Gladstone, in 
delicate and friendly terms, intimated to Mrs. 
Martineau that if pecuniary anxiety in any way 
added to her troubles, he would recommend the 
Queen to give her one of the literary pensions 
of the Civil List. She declined it with real 
gratitude, partly upon the same grounds which 
had before led her to refuse a similar offer, but 
with the additional reason now that she would 
not expose the Queen and the Premier to insult 
for showing friendliness to "an infidel." 

The next letter is mainly domestic, but I am 
sure that those spoken of by name in it will 
not object to publication of references in order 



288 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

to show Harriet Martineau in her amiable, con- 
siderate household character : — 

Dear Friend, December 6, 1873. 

I will not trouble and pain you by a long 
story about the cares and anxieties which 
make the last stage of my long life hard to 
manage and to bear. If I could be quite sure 
of the end being as near as one would suppose, 
I could bear my own share quietly enough ; but 
it is a different thing watching a younger life 
going out prematurely. My beloved Jenny 
will die, after all, we think, bravely as she has 
borne up for two years. The terrible East 
winds again got hold of her before she went (so 
early as October !) to her winter quarters ; and 
there are sudden and grave symptoms of 
dropsy. The old dread of the post has returned 
upon me ; and I am amazed to find how I can 
still suffer from fear. I am quite unfit to live 
alone — even for a week; yet I mean to ven- 
ture it, if necessary. Miss Goodwin shall go 
(to Leeds) for Christmas Day, on which the 
family have always hitherto assembled. I will 
not prevent their doing so now. My niece 
Harriet (Higginson) was to come, as usual, for 
a month's holiday at Christmas ; but her mother 
has lamed herself by a fall, and it must be 
doubtful whether she can be left. Parents pro- 
test the dear girl shall come , but she and I 
wait to see. There is nobody else ; for there 
is illness in all families, or anxiety about illness 
elsewhere. " Well ! we shall be on the other 
side of it somehow," as people say, and it won't 



THE LAST YEARS. 289 

matter much then. My young cook is wanted 
on Christmas Day to be a bridesmaid, at Not- 
tingham. So I have a real reason for giving 
up the great Christmas party I have given (in 
the kitchen) every year till now. It will be 
costly giving the people handsome dinners in 
their own homes ; but the house will be quiet, 
and to me the day will be like any other day. 
It is not now a time for much mirth ; the 
Arnolds meeting at their mother's grave, my 
Jenny absent, from perilous illness, my brain 
failing, so that I can do nothing for anybody 
but by money (and not very much in that way). 
We are all disposed to keep quiet — wishing 
the outside world a ''Merry Christmas." 

April 15th, 1874. 
I am reading again that marvellous Middle- 
march, finding I did not half value it before. It 
is not a book to issue as a serial. Yet, read en 
suite, I find it almost more (greater) than I can 
bear. The Casaubons set me dreaming all 
night. Do you ever hear a7ij/-thing of Lewes 
and Miss Evans ? 

During the whole of the time over which these 
letters extend Mrs. Martineau was subject to 
fainting fits, in any one of which her life might 
have ended. It was thus necessary for her to 
have her maid sleeping in her bed-room. Caro- 
Une, the "dear friend and servant " for twenty- 
one years, died early in 1875. Her place was 
filled by the younger maid, Mary Anne, whom 



290 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

Caroline had trained. The maid has told me of 
her mistress's kindness and readiness to be 
amused ; of the gentleness of her manner, and 
the gratitude which she seemed to feel for all 
loving tendance. The next letter gives a glimpse 
of the daily life from the mistress' pen : — 

Dec. 8, '75. 
East winds have been abundantly bitter ; but 
this house is sheltered from the east and north. 
We do pity the babes and their mothers in the 
cottages below ; and there is no denying that I 
am painfully stupefied by such cold as we have; 
but my aides and my maids are all as well and 
as happy as if we had the making of the season. 
It is a daily surprise to me to see how Jenny 
holds out and on, without any sort of, relapse ; 
yet I cannot rise above the anxiety which haunts 
me in the midst of every night and early morn- 
ing — dread of hearing that she and Miss Good- 
win are ill with the cold which makes vie so ill. 
By six o'clock I can stay in bed no longer. My 
maid and I (in the same room) turn out of our 
beds as the clock strikes ; she puts a match to 
the fire, and goes for my special cup of tea 
(needed after my bad nights), while I brush my 
hair. I take the tea to the window, and look 
out for the lights (Fox How usually the first) as 
they kindle and twinkle throughout the valley 
— Orion going down behind Loughrigg as day 
is breaking. Then I get on the bed for half an 
hour's reading, till the hot water comes up. By 
that time I am in a panic about my aides ; but 



THE LAST YEARS. 2gi 

as soon as I am seated at my little table ready 
for breakfast, in come the dear creatures, as gay 
as larks, with news how the glass stands, out- 
door and in. Out-door (not on the ground) it is 
somewhere between 32^ and 40" at present ; 
and in my room (before the fire has got up), 
from 50^ to S7^' So now you know what our 
present life and climate are like. 

After dinner — I must end almost before I 
have begun ! But, have you seen, in any news- 
paper, the address presented to Carlyle on his 
80th birthday ? I had no doubt about subscrib- 
ing, and my name is there. I feel great defer- 
ence for Masson, who asked me ; and though I 
do not agree with all the ascriptions of the 
address, there is enough in which I do heartily 
agree to enable me to sign ; so I send my 
sovereign with satisfaction. I shall not see the 
medal, not even a bronze one (you know Car- 
lyle's is gold). My expenses are considerable 
at present (not always), and I must not spend on 
such an object. The way in which the thing 
was done is delicate. Instead of overwhelm- 
ing the old man with a deputation, the promot- 
ers had the packet quietly left at his door. It 
would set him weeping for his loneliness, — that 
his long-suffering, faithful wife did not witness 
this crowning glory. He does love fame (or did), 
and no man would despise such a tribute as this ; 
but I think he will find it oppressive. What a 
change since the day when the Edinburgh 
Review was obliged, as Jeffrey said, to decline 
articles from Carlyle — much as he wished to 
aid him — because the readers could not tolerate 



292 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

C.'s writings ! And that was after his now 
famous " Burns " article had appeared, and 
founded his fame in America ! 

Did you see that the Times death-hst showed, 
in two days last week, thirty-three deaths of 
persons over 70, eleven of whom were over 80 ? 
The effect of the cold ! 

. . . The sick and aged will die off fast this 
winter. May I be one ! 

January 25, '76. 
Dear old Friend, 

It is time that you were hearing from us of 
the marked increase in my illness within the 
few days since I last reported of matters of 
mutual interest. I will not trouble you with 
disagreeable descriptions of ailments which 
admit of no advantageous treatment. Last 
week there was, as twice before (and now again 
twice), a copious hemorrhage from some interior 
part, by which I am much weakened. The 
cause is not understood ; and what does it 
matter t I neither know nor much care how it 
happens that I find myself sinking more rapidly 
than hitherto. All I know is that 1 am fully 
satisfied with my share of the interest and 
amusement of life, and of the value of the 
knowledge which has come to me by means of 
the brain, which is worth all the rest of us. 

I have not much pain, none very severe, but 
much discomfort. At times I see very badly, 
and hear almost nothing; and then I recover 
more or less of both powers. There is so 
much cramp in the hands, and elsewhere, that 



THE LAST YEARS. 293 

it seems very doubtful whether you and other 
friends will hear much from me during the 
(supposed) short time that I shall be living. 
But I do hope you will let me hear, to the last, 
of your interests and pursuits, your friendships 
and companionships, and prospects of increas- 
ing wisdom. I cannot write more to-day. 
Perhaps I may become able another day. My 
beloved niece Jenny is well ; better here than 
she would be anywhere else, and more happy 
in her restoration to her home with me than I 
can describe. I could easily show you how and 
why my death within a short time may be for 
the happiness of some whom I love, and who 
love me ; and if it should be the severest trial 
to this most dear helper of my latter days, I 
am sure she will bear it wisely and well. It 
cannot but be the happiest thought in her mind 
and heart — what a blessing she has been to 
my old age ! What have not yon been, dear 
friend ! I must not enter on that now. Jenny 
observed this morning that old or delicate 
people live wonderfully long. True ! but I hope 
my term will be short, if I am to continue as 
ill as at present. 

The end was, indeed, approaching ; and now, 
when at the worst of her illness, it so came 
about that she was asked and consented to do 
one last piece of writing for publication. Her 
young companion. Miss Goodwin, had translated 
Pauli's Simon de Montfort, and Mr. Triibner, 
unaware of course, how ill Mrs. Martineau was, 



294 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

offered to publish the translation on the con- 
dition that she would write an introduction. 
She would not refuse this favor to Miss 
Goodwin, and did the work with great difficulty. 
It was characteristic that she should think it 
necessary to take the trouble to read the whole 
MS. before writing her few pages of introduc- 
tion. 

She was now nearing her seventy-fourth 
birthday; and the strong constitution which 
had worn through so much pain and labor had 
almost exhausted its vitality. 

Even in these last weeks she could not be 
idle. Her hands were cramped, her eyes weak, 
her sensations of fatigue very hard to bear; 
still, she not only continued her correspondence 
with one or two of her dearest friends, but also 
went on with her fancy work. The latter was 
now of that easiest kind, requiring least effort 
of eye and thought — knitting. She occupied 
herself with making cot blankets, in double 
knitting, for the babies of her young friends ; 
some of them among her poorer neighbors, 
whom she had known when they were little 
children themselves and she came first to 
Ambleside, others among more distant and 
wealthier couples. She finished one blanket 
early in the year 1876, for a baby born in 
Ambleside in the January, and she left a second 
one unfinished when she died. 



THE LAST YEARS. 295 

Babies were an unfailing delight to her, to 
the end. Her maids knew that even if she 
were too ill to see grown-up visitors, a little 
child was always a welcome guest, for at least a 
few moments. Her letters to children were 
altogether charming, and so were her ways with 
them, and children always loved her with all 
their wise little hearts. She was a pleasant old 
lady, even for them to look at. The expression 
of the countenance became very gentle and 
motherly, when the strife of working life was 
laid aside ; the eyes were ever kind ; and the 
mouth loved to laugh, sternly and -firmly though 
it could at times be compressed. She wore a 
large cap of delicate lace, and was dainty about 
her person, as regarded the fairest cleanliness. 
Plain in her youth and middle life, she had now 
grown into a beautiful old age — beauty of the 
kind which such years can gain from the impress 
on the features of the high thoughts and 
elevated emotions of the past, with patience, 
lovingness, and serenity in the present. 

Patient, loving, and serene the last years of 
Harriet Martineau were. Those who lived 
with her knew less than her correspondents of 
what she suffered ; for she felt it a duty to tell 
the absent what they could not see for them- 
selves of her state ; but to her household she 
spoke but seldom, comparatively, of her painful 



296 HARRIET MARTINEAU, 

sensations, leaving the matter to their own 
observation. She could be absorbed to the last 
in all that concerned the world and mankind ; 
and she was equally accessible to the smaller 
and more homely interests of the quiet daily 
life of her inmates. The incidents which go to 
show what she was in her domestic circle are 
but trifling ; but what is it that makes the dif- 
ference between an intolerable and a venerable 
old age (or youth, for the matter of that, in 
domestic life) except its conduct about trifles .? 
One who was with her tells of her delight when 
a basket of newly -fledged ducklings was brought 
to her bedside, before she was up, on St. 
Valentine's Day in the year of her death, 
offering her a doggerel tribute as follows : — 

St. Valentine hopes you will not scorn 

This little gift on St. Valentine's morn. 

We'd have come with the chime of last evening's bells, 

But, alas ! we could not break our shells ! 

Then another remembers her amusement 
when one of her nephews had just started to go 
to the coach for London, and the doctor, coming 
in unannounced, left his hat on the hall table, 
which the active servant seeing, and jumping 
to the conclusion that Mr. Martineau (travelling 
in a felt) had left his high hat behind him, 
rushed off with it to the coach-office, half a mile 



THE LAST YEARS. 297 

away ; so that when the doctor wanted to go, his 
hat was off to the coach ; and " the old lady did 
laugh so." Only a week or two before her 
death, she was merry enough to ask her doctor 
that dreadful punning conundrum about the 
resemblance between an ice-cream vender, and 
an hydrophobic patient — the answer turning 
on the legend " Water ices and ice creams " 
(water I sees, and I screams) — telling him that 
it was diprofessional conundrum. At the same 
time she was kind enough to repeat to him the 
compliments which a visitor of hers had been 
paying his baby. This was the lighter side of 
the aged woman's life, the more serious aspect 
of which is shown in some of her letters to Mr. 
Atkinson. The last of these letters must now 

be given :- — 

Ambleside, May 19, 1876. 
Dear Friend, 

Jenny, and also my sister, have been observ- 
ing that you ought to be hearing from us, 
and have offered to write to you. You will see 
at once what this means ; and it is quite true 
that I have become so much worse lately that 
we ought to guard against your being surprised, 
some day soon, by news of my life being closed. 
I feel uncertain about how long I may live in 
my present state. I can only follow the judg- 
ment of unprejudiced observers ; and I see that 
my household believe the end to be not far off. 
I will not trouble you with disagreeable details. 



298 HARRIET MARTINEAU, 

It is enough to say that I am in no respect better, 
while all the ailments are on the increase. The 
imperfect heart-action immediately affects the 
brain, causing the suffering which is worse than 
all other evils together, — the horrid sensation 
of not being quite myself. This strange, dreamy 
noil-recognition of myself com.QS, on every evening, 
and all else is a trifle in comparison. But there 
is a good deal more. Cramps in the hands 
prevent writing, and most other employment, 
except at intervals. Indications of dropsy have 
lately appeared : and after this, I need not again 
tell you that I see how fully my household 
believe that the end is not far off. Meantime I 
have no cares or troubles beyond the bodily 
uneasiness (which, however, I don't deny to be 
an evil). I cannot think of any future as at all 
probable, except the " annihilation " from which 
some people recoil with so much horror. I find 
myself here in the universe, — I know not how, 
whence, or why. I see everything in the uni- 
verse go out and disappear, and I see no reason 
for supposing that it is not an actual and entire 
death. And for my part, I have no objection to 
such an extinction. I well remember the pas- 
sion with which W. E. Forster said to me, " I 
had rather be damned than annihilated." If he 
once felt five minutes' damnation, he would be 
thankful for extinction in preference. The truth 
is, I care little about it any way. Now that the 
event draws near, and that I see how fully my 
household expects my death, pretty soon, the 
universe opens so widely before my view, and I 
see the old notions of death and scenes to follow 



THE LAST YEARS. 299 

to be so merely human — so impossible to be 
true, when one glances through the range of 
science — that I see nothing to be done but to 
wait without fear or hope, or ignorant prejudice, 
for the expiration of life. I have no wish for 
further experience, nor have I any fear of it. 
Under the weariness of illness I long to be 
asleep ; but I have not set my mind in any state. 
I wonder if all this represents your notions at all. 
I should think it does, while yet we are fully 
aware how mere a glimpse we have of the 
universe and the life it contains. 

Above all, I wish to escape from the narrow- 
ness of taking a mere human view of things, 
from the absurdity of making God after man's 
own image, etc. 

But I will leave this, begging your pardon for 
what may be so unworthy to be dwelt on. 
However, you may like to know how the case 
looks to a friend under the clear knowledge of 
death being so near at hand. My hands are 
cramped and I must stop. My sister is here 
for the whole of May, and she and Jenny are 
most happy together. Many affectionate rela- 
tions and friends are willing to come if needed 
(the Browns among others), if I live beyond 
July. You were not among the Boulogne theo- 
logical petitioners, I suppose. I don't know 

whether you can use there t I was very 

thankful for your last, though I have said noth- 
ing about its contents. If I began that, I should 
not know how to stop. 

So good-bye for to-day, dear friend ! 

Yours ever, 

H. M. 



300 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

The internal tumor which was the prime 
cause of her malady (an entirely different kind 
of thing, however, from that which she suffered 
from at Tynemouth), had long been the source of 
great inconvenience, compelling her to descend 
the stairs backwards, and to spend much time in 
a recumbent position. The post mortem exami- 
nation made by her medical attendant, at the 
request of her executors, two days after she died, 
revealed the fact that this tumor was the true 
cause of her sufferings. She never knew it 
herself. Relying on the statement of the 
eminent men whom she consulted in 1855, that 
it was the heart that was affected, she accepted 
that as her fate. It was, however, the slow 
growth of a ''dermoid cyst" which made her 
linger till such an age, through the constant 
suffering of twenty-one preceding years. 

In the early part of June, 1876, she nad an 
attack of bronchitis, and though medical treat- 
ment subdued this speedily, it exhausted her 
strength greatly. From about the 14th of that 
month — two days after her seventy-fourth birth- 
day — she was confined to her room, but still 
rose from bed. On the 24th she was too ill to 
get up. Then drowsiness gradually increased 
and in a little while she sank quietly into a 
dreamy state, in which she seemed to retain 
consciousness when aroused, but was too weak 



THE LAST YEARS. 301 

to either take food or to speak. At last, on the 
27th of June, 1876, just as the summer sunset 
was gilding the hills that she knew and loved so 
well, she quietly and peacefully drew her last 
breath, and entered into eternal rest. 

Truly her death — not only the last moments, 
but the long ordeal — might stand for an illus- 
tration of the saying of the wise men of old — 
" Keep innocency, and take heed unto the thing 
that is right, for tJiat shall bring a man peace at 
the last." 

She was buried amidst her kindred, in the old 
cemetery of Birmingham ; and upon the tomb- 
stone, where it stands amidst the smoke, there 
is no inscription beyond her name and age, and 
the places of birth and death. 

More was, perhaps, needless. Her works, and 
a yet more precious possession, her character 
remain. Faults she had, of course — the neces- 
sary defects of her virtues. Let it be said that 
she held her own opinions too confidently — 
the uncertain cannot be teachers. Let it be 
said that her personal dislikes were many and 
strong — it is the necessary antithesis of power- 
ful attachments. Let it be said that her powers 
of antagonism at times were not sufficiently 
restrained — how, without such oppugnancy, 
could she have stood forth for unpopular truths .'* 
Let all that detractors can say be said, and how 
much remains untouched ! 



302 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

In the paths where Harriet Martineau trod at 
first ahiiost alone, many women are now fol- 
lowing. Serious studies, political activity, a 
share in social reforms, an independent, self- 
supporting career, and freedom of thought and 
expression, are by the conditions of our age, 
becoming open to the thousands of women who 
would never have dared to claim them in the 
circumstances in which she first did so. In a 
yet earlier age such a life, even to such powers 
as hers, would have been impossible. As it 
was, she was only a pioneer of the new order of 
things inevitable under the advance of civiliza- 
tion and knowledge. The printing-press, which 
multiplies the words of the thinker ; the steam- 
engine, which both feeds the press and rushes 
off with its product, and the electric telegraph, 
which carries thought around the globe, make 
this an age in which mental force assumes an im- 
portance which it never had before in the his- 
tory of mankind. Mind will be more and more 
valued and cultivated, and will grow more and 
more influential ; and the condition and status 
of women must alter accordingly. Some people 
do not like this fact ; and no one can safely 
attempt to foresee all its consequences ; but we 
can no more prevent it than we can return to 
hornbooks, or to trial by ordeal, or to the feudal 
tenure of land, or to any other bygone state of 



THE LAST YEARS. 303 

social affairs. More and more it will grow cus- 
tomary for women to study such subjects as Har- 
riet Martineau studied ; more commonplace will 
it constantly become for women to use all their 
mental faculties, and to exert every one of their 
powers to the fullest extent in the highest free- 
dom. What, then, have we to wish about that 
which is inevitable, except that the old high 
womanly standard of moral excellence may be 
no whit lowered, but may simply be carried 
into the wider sphere of thought and action } 

It may do much, indeed, for us that we have 
had such a pioneer as Harriet Martineau. It is 
not only that she lived so that all worthy people, 
however differing from her in opinion, respected 
and honored her — though that is much. It is 
not only that she has settled, once for all, that 
a woman can be a political thinker and a teacher 
from whom men may gladly receive guidance — 
though that is much. But the great value of 
her life to us is as a splendid example of the 
moral qualities which we should carry into our 
widest sphere, and which we should display in 
our public exertions. 

She cared for nothing before the truth ; her 
efforts to discover it were earnest and sincere, 
for she spared no pains in study and no labor in 
thought in the attempt to form her opinions 
correctly. Having found what she must believe 
to be a right cause to uphold, or a true word to 



304 HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

Speak, no selfish consideration intruded between 
her and her duty. She could risk fame, and 
position, and means of livelihood, when neces- 
sary, to unselfishly support and promulgate 
what she believed it to be important for mankind 
to do and believe. She longed for the well- 
being of her kind ; and so unaffectedly and 
honestly that men who came under her influ- 
ence were stimulated and encouraged by her to 
share and avow similar high aims. Withal, 
those who lived with her loved her ; she was a 
kind mistress, a good friend, and tender to little 
children ; she was truly helpful to the poor at 
her gates, and her life was spotlessly pure. 

Is not this what we should all strive to be.^ 
Shall we not love knowledge, and use it to find 
out truth ; and place outspoken fidelity to con- 
science foremost amongst our duties ; and care 
for the progress of our race rather than for our 
own fame ; shall we not be truthful, and honest, 
and upright — and, to this end, brave — in pub- 
lic as in private life ; and shall we not seek so 
to bear ourselves that men shall shrink from 
owning their ignobler thoughts and baser shifts 
to us, but shall never fear to avow high aims and 
pure deeds, while yet we retain our womanly 
kindness and all our domestic virtues un- 
changed } All this we may know that we can 
be and do, if we will ; for we have seen it exem- 
plified in the life of Harriet Martineau. 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 

jFaiuous SEomen Series. 

MARGARET~'FULLER. 

By JULIA WARD HOWE. 



" A memoir of the woman who first in New England took a position of moral 
and intellectual leadership, by the woman who wrote the Battle Hymn of the 
Republic, is a literary event of no common or transient interest. The Famous 
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which made another one of the most marked characters of her day. It is always 
agreeable to follow Mrs. Howe in this ; for while we see marks of her own mind 
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day Gazette. 

" Mrs. Julia Ward Howe has retold the story of Margaret Fuller's life and 
career in a very interesting manner. This remarkable woman was happy in 
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"The selection of Mrs. Howe as the writer of this biography was a happy 
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not hesitating to use plenty of quotations when she felt that others, or even 
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phia Press. 

Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of 
the price, by the publishers, 

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Boston, Mass. 



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FAMOUS WOMEN SERIES. 

THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY. 

BY VERNON LEE. 
One volume. IGmo. Cloth. Price $1.00. 



" It is no disparagement to the many excellent previous sketches to say that 
* The Countess of Albany,' by Vernon Lee, is decidedly the cleverest of the series 
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not only familiar with and in sympathy with the character under discussion, but 
also at home with'the ruling forces of the eighteenth century, which were the forces 
that made the Countess of Albany what she was. The biography is really dual, trac- 
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Countess, quite as carefully as it traces that of the fixed subject of the sketch." — 
Philadelphia Times. 

"To be unable altogether to acquiesce in Vernon Lee's portrait of Louise of 
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" She is the first really historical character who has appeared on the literary 
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history of this friendship is not only exceedingly interesting, but it presents a 
fascinating psychological study to those who are interested in the metaphysical 
asjsect of human nature. The'book is almost as much of a biography of ' Alfieri ' 
as it is of the wife of the Pretender, who expected to become the Queen of Eng- 
land." — H art/or d Times. 

• 

Sold by all booksellers. Mailed., postpaid, oil receipt of 
the price, by the publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers Pitblicatio7is. 



JFamous OTlomen Series. 



MARIA EDGEWORTH. 

By HELEN ZIMMERN. 



" This little volume shows good literary workmanship. It does not weary the 
reader with vague theories ; nor does It give over much expression to the enthu- 
siasm — not to say baseless encomium — for which too many female biographers 
have accustomed us to look. It is a simple and discriminative sketch of one of 
the most clever and lovable of the class at whom Carlyle sneered as ' scribbling 
women.' ... Of Maria Edgeworth, the woman, one cannot easily say too 
much In praise. That home life, so loving, so wise, and so helpful, was beautiful 
lo its end. Miss Zimmern has treated it with delicate appreciation. Her book 
is refined in conception and tasteful in execution,— all, In short, the cynic might 
say, that we expect a woman's book to be." — New York Tribune. 

" It was high time that we should possess an adequate biography of this orna- 
ment and general benefactor of her time. And so we hail with uncommon pleas- 
ure the volume just published In the Roberts Brothers' series of Famous Women, 
of which It is the sixth. We have only words of praise for the manner in which 
Miss Zimmern has written her life of Maria Edgeworth. It exhibits sound 
judgment, critical analysis, and clear characterization. . . . The style of the 
volume is pure, limpid, and strong, as we might expect from a well-trained Eng- 
Hsh writer." — Margaret J. Preston, in the Home Jotirnal. 

" We can heartily recommend this life of Maria Edgeworth, not only because it 
is singularly readable in Itself, but because it makes familiar to readers of the 
present age a notable figure In English literary history, with whose lineaments 
we suspect most readers, especially of the present generation, are less familiar 
than they ought to be." — Eclectic. 

" This biography contains several letters and papers by Miss Edgeworth that 
have not before been made public, notably some charming letters written during 
the latter part of her life to Dr. Holland and Mr. and Mrs. Ticknor. The author 
had access to a life of Miss Edgeworth written by her step-mother, as well as to a 
large collection of her private letters, and has therefore been able to bring forward 
many facts In her life which have not been noted by other writers. The book is 
written In a pleasant vein, and is altogether a delightful one to read." — Utica 
Herald. 



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lishers, 

RORERTS BROTHERS, 

Boston, Mass. 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 



jFamous SEomett Series* 



ELIZABETH FRY. 

By Mrs. E. R. PITMAN. 

One vol. i6mo. Cloth. Price ^i.oo. 



" In the records of famous women there are few more noble examples of 
Christian womanhood and philanthropic enthusiasm than the life of Elizabeth 
Fry presents. Her character was beautifully rounded and complete, and if she 
had not won fame through her public benefactions, she would have been no less 
esteemed and remembered by all who knew her because of her domestic virtues, 
her sweet womanly charms, and the wisdom, purity, and love which marked her 
conduct as wife, mother, and friend. She came of that sound old Quaker stock 
which has bred so many eminent men and women. The time came when her 
home functions could no longer satisfy the yearnings of a heart filled with the 
tenderest pity for all who suffered ; and her work was not far to seek. The prisons 
of England, nay, of all Europe, were in a deplorable condition. In Newgate, 
dirt, disease, starvation, depravitj', drunkenness, &c., prevailed. All who sur- 
veyed the situation regarded it as hopeless ; all but Mrs. Fry. She saw here the 
opening she had been awaiting. Into this seething mass she bravely entered, 
Bible in hand, and love and pity in her eyes and upon her lips. If any one 
should ask which of all the famous women recorded in this series did the most 
practical good in her day and generation, the answer must be, Elizabeth Fry." — 
New York Tribtme- 

" Mrs. Pitman has written a very interesting and appreciative sketch of the 
life, character, and eminent services in the causes of humanity of one of Eng- 
land's most famous philanthropists. She was known as the prison philanthropist, 
and probably no laborer in the cause of prison reform ever won a larger share of 
success, and certainly none ever received a larger meed of reverential love. No 
one can read this volume without feelings of admiration for the noble woman who 
devoted her life to befriend sinful and suffering humanity." — Chicago Evening 
Journcil. 

" The story of her splendid and successful philanthropy is admirably told by 
her biographer, and every reader should find in the tale a breath of inspiration. 
Not every woman can become an Elizabeth Fry, but no one can fail to be im- 
pressed with the thought that no woman, however great her talent and ambition, 
can fail to find opportunity to do a noble work in life without neglecting her own 
feminine duties, without ceasing to dignify all the distinctive virtues of her sex> 
without fretting and crying aloud over the restrictions placed on woman's field of 
work." — Eclectic Monthly, 

* 

Our publications are for sale by all booksellers., or will be 
sent post-paid on receipt of advertised price. 

''i i -^ v.-fll^BERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



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